The Heartless (The Sublime Electricity Book #2)

by Pavel Kornev

  I hit confidently. I hit to kill.

  And that realization sobered me up instantly, forcing me to take a step back and throw the bloodied blade away.

  I mean, I'd killed before, but not with my bare hands. Feeling how easily the blade entered the supple flesh, how it scraped on the ribs and how the handle shuddered in my clenched fist. And the death throes, pressing the body to the floor, was something I'd also never seen before. So then, why the devil did it feel so surprisingly familiar?!

  I sighed loudly as I woke up yet again. The anesthesia was still stupefying my mind. The chloroform was leaving my body at a torturously slow pace, from time to time immersing me in the soft embrace of oblivion.

  Now, my mind was getting clearer, and I nearly managed to suppress a scream that tore itself from me.

  Completely nude, I was standing over the medic's bloody body. I was also covered in blood from head to toe.

  What kind of devilry was afoot here?!

  I turned my victim onto his back, but the doctor was already beyond help. I then stood up straight and cast my gaze over the room I found myself in.

  "Operation room," came some vaguely familiar words emerging from my memory.

  The huge bulb under the ceiling filled the room with a blinding luster. In the middle, there was a table, covered with a sheet besmirched with crimson spots. A stand with a tray was pushed over on top of it. There were scalpels, surgical scissors, clamps and used napkins.

  Having noticed a wash basin in the corner of the room with a mirror, I approached it, intending to wash up, but I froze in place on seeing my reflection.

  It wasn't my pale corpse-like skin that scared me. What drove me to terror was the slash across my ribcage. There were ribs jutting out, hacked up and moved aside by the confident hand of an experienced surgeon. And, over my heart, there was a vast cavity.

  Over? Nope – instead of!

  I had no heart! My heart had been cut out!

  I just gasped. No. No, no, no.

  This simply could not be! It must have all been from the chloroform. This was just a crazy vision, created by the power of my imagination. Just a subconscious fear of death brought to life by my illustrious talent.

  I turned on the water, washed up and quietly laughed at my absurd fit of anxiety.

  My heart had been cut out? What complete nonsense!

  I mean seriously, who would want my heart? Other than me, of course.

  But then I quickly remembered the strange events of the past day, the medic's interrogation, the innuendo, and the blood sent out for analysis.

  Well, what if they decided to transplant my heart into the heiress to the throne?

  Wild horror shook me from head to toe. I clenched my fingers around my wrist, trying to detect a pulse, but didn't manage.

  Curses! With a single jerk, I pulled the sink off the wall and threw it to the other end of the operation room.

  I am not dead! I am moving, thinking and feeling.

  I think, therefore I am!

  But what to do about the heart? Where was my heart? Where had it been brought?!

  And why wasn’t I dead yet?

  I felt an unbearable urge to run off in search of the scoundrels who'd disemboweled me, but a glimmer of good sense stopped me from committing this act of highest-order recklessness.

  These people knew what they'd done. Seeing their organ donor back from the dead would hardly bring them any joy. They wouldn't put the heart back, or sew up the wound. They'd kill me. And this time, it would be for good.

  Run! I needed to run out of here immediately!

  And then it dawned on me. The heart of the fallen one!

  That hellish thing was still beating, even after I'd ripped it from the chest of the infernal creature. Its strength was such that it didn't need surgeons, needles or stitches. I could just pop it in my chest and become alive again.

  I could do that!

  And it wasn't just that I could, that was exactly what I intended to do. I'd have plenty of time to think about revenge later.

  I was overcome by hatred – my heart! They’d cut out my heart! But the ghastly desire to tear out someone else's throat with my bear hands, fortunately, soon subsided, and I knelt down in exhaustion next to the medic. His blood-soaked clothing was only fit to be thrown out now.

  I cracked the door carefully, looked at the cabinet-jammed room, quietly slunk into it and picked out an outfit that more or less corresponded to my size. I got dressed, put on some shoes and, after loading the corpse onto a gurney, covered it with a sheet.

  I threw a white robe on over my jacket and pants, covered my face with a gauze mask, snapped a white skull-cap onto my head and rolled the gurney down the corridor, not at all afraid to be discovered by staff.

  And so it went – no one even looked at me.

  I abandoned the corpse and gurney in a hidden nook, pulled the mask down onto my neck and stuck a cigarette into my mouth that I found in the pocket of the borrowed jacket. I clapped over my pockets in a businesslike manner, passed the post and hurried to get lost among the many buildings of the military hospital. The men in charge of the guard booth didn't even consider checking the documents of the medic leaving their zone of responsibility.

  Getting past the gates outside was no work at all. The robe, mask and skull-cap had already long been sent into the first trash can I came across. I calmly walked around the boom barrier and walked off down the sidewalk.

  There I was, a dead man rushing home. This dead man wanted a new heart.

  Bugger!

  3

  THE ESTATE greeted me with a mess of trees that fell down in the storm, decayed mummy bodies and pieces of broken wall. The spectacle was even more unsightly than usual. Meanwhile, by some unknown force, the manor had grown older and more dilapidated. The whitewash was cracking and peeling, and the roof had grown dark with areas missing tile. Everything was covered in mud. The flower beds were washed out, the black dead flowers forming a partially rotten canopy.

  The curse had retreated, and time had taken its due. Time always takes its due.

  But that didn’t matter. I was not planning to live here. All I needed now was the heart of the fallen one.

  My heart.

  Not wanting to deal with the front door, I came in through a hole in the wall, grabbed my grandfather's saber and, for some reason, returned it to its place over the mantle. I didn't get distracted by anything else, just went straight down to the basement.

  There was enough light coming through the hole in the floor to see, but I still had to walk in knee-high water for some time before I found the glass jar with the heart. After finding it in the very darkest corner, I ran up the stairs and laughed nervously, squeezing the internally frosted vessel to my chest.

  There it was! I found it!

  But when I got the tight cap off, the fallen one's heart was not in the jar. There were just some scraps glowing with an internal shimmer; scraps and that was it.

  The moist glass slipped from my suddenly numb fingers, fell underfoot, and shattered.

  I, meanwhile, froze, not feeling up to checking it with my own eyes.

  Where was it? Where had it gone?

  "Bugger, what a mess!" the leprechaun grumbled, having come out of nowhere. He lifted one of the pieces of glass, sniffed and stated authoritatively: "Rat poison!"

  I stared at the pipsqueak in incomprehension, then grabbed the intact bottom, sniffed the scraps covering the glass and also caught a familiar scent. The succubus had generously seasoned her food with exotic spices, but I recognized this aroma immediately.

  And then it dawned on me.

  She had fed me the heart of the fallen one! Day after day, she had been cooking it, and I had been happily chowing down on the flesh of a supernatural creature, none the wiser! So, that was why I’d had such a persistent bout of the Diabolic Plague! That was the true reason I was sick, not just the blood I got on my arms!

  A fit of maniacal laughter came over me. I l
aughed, and couldn't stop. I laughed, laughed and laughed like a madman.

  And a madman was just what I'd become.

  The succubus had been intending to damage my soul but, instead, she reinforced my illustrious talent to such a degree, that it had overcome death itself! The power of my thoughts alone turned out to be enough to support life in my body, even with no heart.

  I think, therefore I am? Indeed!

  But what now? Sew up the hole in my chest and remain among the living dead?

  Did I want such a fate for myself?

  In exhaustion, I sat down on a chair. But just then, with an unexpectedly biting slap, my hysteria was cut short.

  "Don't you remember?" he asked. "Bugger! You really don't remember anything, do you?"

  "Do I not remember what?" I asked, looking him from top to bottom. I then touched my split lip, but no blood came out. I mean, how could a dead man have blood?

  "Everything!" the white-haired pipsqueak exclaimed angrily. "You don't remember, do you?"

  "I don't remember!"

  "Bugger!" cursed the leprechaun. "Bugger! Bugger! Bugger!"

  He suddenly jerked the ratty green camisole off him, keeping his pants and pinafore on; his sinewy body was covered with tattoos just like mine, but mirrored and branded into him with red-hot iron.

  It surprised and scared me, but I was somewhat more scared by the kitchen knife the pipsqueak pulled from his belt.

  "Do you want to remember?" the leprechaun asked, drawing the blade in a sharp motion across the palm of his clenched fist. Crimson blood shot out and the albino extended the knife to me. "Give me your left hand!" He demanded. "Only the left!"

  The left? The arm that hadn't received a single tattoo?

  I didn't hesitate for even a second, took the knife and split my chalk-white skin with its sharp edge. I was expecting a bloodless cut, but my hand instantly gushed with black fluid. And from my wrist to my elbow and higher, right to the place where my heart should have been, a torturous pain shot out.

  From there, the leprechaun did everything. He clenched my hand in his, like in a barbaric blood-brotherhood ritual, and rasped out:

  "Well, do you remember now, dimwit?"

  The markings on his skin suddenly filled with luster. A moment later, that fire transferred to me, but before my consciousness was devoured by the pitiless flame, I managed to answer:

  "I do remember now!"

  And I really did. Old memories, buried in the depths of my psyche, returned. And together with them, something more returned, a certain part of me...

  A PIERCING COLD, dull reflections of a kerosene lamp on ice chunks; the frost covered door of the cellar slammed shut. No matter how I knocked or screamed – I’d never call for help through its thick barrier.

  But I did scream, I know that for sure.

  The chef with a ghastly kitchen knife, the cold steel in my chest, the frightening smile on the hellspawn in my house, my heart in his hand...

  But I saw all this from another perspective, all from the eyes of my imaginary friend. And suddenly – a miniature hand on the handle of a knife stuck into the ice chunks, a blistering burst, blood spatters, creaks from a split throat. And – blank. After that, there was a gaping hole in my memory.

  The leprechaun did everything after that on his own.

  The memories flickered before my inner gaze in a flash; I tore off the appropriated shirt and, in muted amazement, stared at two terrifying gashes, splitting the eight-pointed star tattooed on my chest; the new one had traces of fresh blood, and the old was dark-blue, white and scarred.

  Curse me!

  The fear of the little boy was so strong that my illustrious talent had created him a new heart! A new, imaginary heart!

  And I would have laughed if it wasn't so painful. The tattoos glowed and burned with a ferocious fire. I was shaken by convulsions. My ribs cracked, moving back into place, growing and stretching over with flesh. The wounds – both old and recent – covered over. Now, not even scars remained. But the metamorphosis didn't end there. The changes flowed over my body from the cut on the left hand as if mercury had been injected into my veins. Muscle fibers wrapped the bones, crawled under the skin and widened my shoulders, reshaping me, turning me into someone else.

  Into the person I was meant to grow up into, if it hadn't been for that ill-fated evening in the basement of my father's manor...

  When the tattoos stopped glowing and went gray, and the fit ended, I spread-eagled out in complete exhaustion on the cold floor. The clothing from the hospital was split at the seams and hanging off me in tatters; I was no longer a lean string-bean. I now looked like a complete copy of my father.

  Tall, broad-shouldered, and strong.

  And I became exactly like my father. Inside me, there now also lived a beast.

  With the help of the tattoos, my father had managed to lock the hereditary condition inside me, depriving it of power, protecting his son from transforming into a blood-thirsty monster. The irony of fate is that my dark alter ego was already external, even then. My illustrious talent had placed it into an imaginary friend, and only now had everything come full circle.

  I had become a werebeast. I was now a werebeast, and a heart was beating in my chest once more!

  The hereditary disorder! That was exactly what had protected the dead chef from the curse. That was the exact reason he had called my father and I degenerates.

  Sensing my weakness retreating gradually, I got up from the floor, reeled and nearly fell, but managed to lean my back against the wall. I glanced at the white mark of the residual scar, which stretched across my left hand, then ripped off the remainder of the other person's clothing and, stumbling, went up to the third floor.

  In all the years I'd lived in this manor, I'd never entered my father's room. Everything there was just like the last day of his life in this house. Books, personal items, clothing...

  And now, I was going for the clothing. Though it was damp and clumped, smelled of must and had long gone out of style, it fit my new body-size perfectly. I selected some underwear, trousers, a vest and a frock coat, then donned a pair of good-quality, slightly worn boots and returned to the first floor.

  My new body moved with a grace beyond all understanding. It seemed someone was controlling it for me, and initially, that even scared me. The light got brighter, smells grew stronger, and I could now sense even the smallest nuances in aroma.

  Not that I wanted to. It smelled of death in the house.

  It smelled of death in the house, and I wasn't planning on sticking around. Not for one hour, or even one minute. Not at all.

  In the wallet taken from the hospital, I discovered two ten-franc bank-notes and seven francs in change; I moved the money into the pocket of my old-fashioned frock coat. The wallet I threw on the floor, then went outside.

  The sky was growing lighter. The sun was shining through the foggy smoke and I felt the habitual desire to set my dark glasses on my nose, but they were still in the hospital.

  In the hospital, along with my cut-out heart. I wonder if the heiress to the throne would start having imaginary delusions? I mean, why not? It had served me in truth and faith for many long years.

  I laughed and went out the gate. I glanced at the tower atop the hill gratefully. It was rusty, iron, homely and hadn't suffered one bit in yesterday's showdown. I turned around and started down the hill to the city, once again covered with a gray cloud of smog.

  On Dürer-Platz, I kept my distance from the broken fountain basin with gawkers crowding around, and headed off to walk through the city, not especially wanting to go anywhere, just getting used to the unfamiliar sensations and enjoying my new life.

  My legs took me on their own to the Greek Quarter, I stood on the embankment of the unnamed canal, looked from a distance at the Charming Bacchante cabaret and suddenly realized I simply could not just walk past.

  Albert Brandt was my only friend. He understood me like no one else, and it would be wrong to
allow our friendship to end because of the succubus's scheming.

  She had us both wrapped around her finger, and we'd both messed things up! The poet had insisted on a duel, and I'd knocked him out by throwing the billiard ball. But I still could go and fix it! I could still find the right words. I could and I should!

  I was certain of that, and yet still shivered uncomfortably while walking inside.

  "Is Albert home?" I asked the owner's nephew, who was wiping down the bar.

  If he noticed the changes in my appearance, he didn't show it.

  "The poet?" he asked, wiping out a beer glass and shaking his head: "The poet moved out. This morning."

  "What do you mean he moved out?" I froze. The left side of my chest shot through with pain.

  "He moved out for good," the young man answered calmly. "He was warbling like a nightingale about some blind girl, Paris in spring and London at night. I heard him ask a cabby to bring him to the port."

  I took a deep sigh, forcing myself to calm down and dug through my pockets for change.

  "Pour me a..."

  "Lemonade?" the owner's nephew suggested customarily.

  "No," I cut him off sharply, setting a five-franc coin on the bar. "Pour me a vodka. Russian."

  Immeasurably surprised at my choice, the boy didn't accost me with an interrogation. He obediently filled the crystal decanter and placed the shot glass next to it. I went outside, stood at a table under the awning, poured myself some vodka and froze for a short time with the glass just under my mouth.

  I finally took a slight sip, winced from the detestable flavor of strong alcohol and clanged the shot glass down on the table. I stood for a bit, dumped it out in a sharp jerk and started decisively off down the street.

  My new life had the familiar taste of disappointment, but I wasn't going to waste it on empty regrets. I would go on to do great deeds; great deeds, and no one could tell me otherwise.

  End of Book Two

  About the Author

  Pavel Kornev is a popular Russian author whose writing crosses the boundaries of the sci fi thriller, fantasy adventure and steampunk. Genre mashing has long become his signature style.