The Devil's Detective

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  “The killer of demons,” said yet another voice, this one threatening. “The protector of humans. And he comes to ask us questions.”

  “It is,” again, and then the figure was out from the mass and moving across the narrow expanse of muddied road toward Fool. None of the demons moved; if anything, they shuffled back, clustering together more tightly.

  “Hello, Fool,” said Rhakshasas and held out a clawed hand. Ropes of gut twisted around the demon’s arm, shapes within the gut moving and pulsing. Fool, too startled to move, thought at first that the archdeacon was offering assistance in rising, and then he saw different. Rhakshasas was holding out a tube, and even in the guttering orange light from his lantern, Fool saw that the ribbon wrapped around it was blue.

  “You are out of place, Fool,” said Rhakshasas and dropped the canister in the mud by Fool’s feet.

  “This is the killer of demons and it must die,” said something from behind Rhakshasas, and the demon that had held him up lurched closer. Its mouth worked as it spoke, teeth clashing and saliva spilling over blubber lips and spattering to the ground. A rumble of agreement swilled around Rhakshasas and Fool, and he had the sense of claws unsheathing, of lips pulling back from teeth, of spines and horns stretching and lowering, of something like a huge spider, new legs emerging from its body and then retracting, rising up.

  Of things preparing.

  Fool blinked again, his vision still shifting in and out of focus, and thrust his gun around, jerking it left and right and trying to aim at the entire pack of demons at once. His hand shook, the barrel of the gun yawing to and fro as he moved it, mud dripping from it. The trigger was gritty under his finger, and slippery. He would get off maybe one shot before they tore him to pieces, he thought; no more than that.

  “No,” said Rhakshasas, standing and turning. Suddenly he seemed much larger, the entrails around him swelling and standing out like wings. Against the sky, he looked like some angel gone to corruption and rot, dripping with holes and stinking of shit and blood. He was nothing like the archdeacon behind the table giving Fool his instructions, wary and confused by the Man, but was now wild and terrifying. Claws curled out of a hand that had elongated and twisted, and his legs were gnarled and thick below the living cloak of ropey guts. When he breathed, clouds of dark smoke fell from his mouth. Another cheap trick, or was Rhakshasas himself a thing of flame when he was roused? Fool didn’t know.

  After a moment, the gathering crowd shifted back, creating a gap through which Fool could see buildings and streets and space and, perhaps, escape. Keeping his gun and lantern up, he used the box behind him to push himself to his feet. His clothes were filthy with Crow Heights’ earth, black and clinging and soaking through the thin cloth to kiss his cold skin. The thing that had lifted him snarled and Fool simply nodded at it; what else could he do?

  “There has been another slaughter overnight, Fool,” said Rhakshasas, turning back, his caul of guts drooping and twining back around his body. He held out the canister again, its blue ribbon dangling. “It seemed opportune to hand it to you in person rather than instruct Elderflower in its delivery.”

  “Thank you,” said Fool, taking the canister.

  “The archdeacons continue to watch you with interest, Fool. You fascinate us. What did Elderflower report to us that you said? That you described this as a trail, that you follow its route step-by-step? Fascinating! Go, investigate, bring me the Man, Fool, find your killer. Follow your trail and we shall follow you, we shall watch you. We will be ever there, Fool, ever at your back. Remember that, our little fascinating Fool.”

  Fascinating Fool, he thought as he backed toward the entrance, gun still aloft. Little fascinating Fool, watched by all of Hell.

  Summer was already there. She was standing on the edge of the pit looking down into it, and as Fool came close he saw tears on her face.

  They were on the edge of a field out beyond the Houska, in the hinterland between the farmland and the inhabited areas. The journey had taken perhaps an hour, walking and using one of the battered trains, and in that time the air had darkened to a sullen gray, the daylight filtered by gathering, thickening clouds. The field was cast yellow with flickering from the Flame Garden, several miles away but still visible. The farm overseer, a demon covered in coarse brown hair with short, bowed legs and long arms that dragged through the dust, was setting up lanterns on poles along the edge of the pit. With each one it lit, the scene below Fool’s feet became clearer.

  The pit was filled with bodies, each torn and battered. Blood soaked into the earth of the pit’s sides, thickening it, and Fool had the blackly humorous thought that the soil would be healthy and well fed in this part of the farm at least. The field stank, of soil that was fertilized with shit and of the Aruhlians’ blood.

  “How many?” asked Summer.

  “Six,” said Fool, holding up the message from inside the tube. It looked like more, so mangled were the bodies and so strewn the pieces. “They can’t have put up a fight, not really.” On the edge of the mass of broken flesh lay the torso of a male Aruhlian, his head turned to an unnatural angle, peering back over his shoulder at Fool. The skin of his face was painted with blood, his own or someone else’s, and his mouth was open. He looked reproachful.

  “Why were they here?” asked Summer, her tears falling harder now.

  “Their home,” said the demon, hammering the last pole into the earth. The lantern swung on it, making the bodies below them move in sinuous, shadowy undulations.

  “It’s a hole in the ground,” said Summer. “A fucking hole! There isn’t even a roof or walls.” She began to cry in earnest now, long, hitching sobs, and Fool wondered whether she was crying for the dead Aruhlians or for the orphans or for Gordie or for herself. For all of them, maybe.

  “Home,” repeated the demon. Fool, remembering the Aruhlians he had met, with their yellowing skin and foul breath and stained teeth and their placid attitude, thought that it was probably their choice, another self-imposition in the hope of reducing their time in Hell. And now, here they were, dead. Their souls, he was prepared to bet, had been released from their flesh. Perhaps, after all, they’d finally got what they wanted.

  “We’re going to need more porters,” Fool said, looking back into the pit.

  They needed to sort through the bodies, so Fool had no choice but to climb down, stand ankle deep in earth that had become blood-soaked mud, and try to piece the flesh and bone together. Summer joined him, crying all the while as she picked up and sifted and rolled. Fool didn’t think she realized she was crying, and then wondered whether he was as well. His face was wet, although with sweat or tears, he could not tell. As they worked, Summer spoke.

  “I’ve been in Gordie’s room, reading,” she said, voice catching and hoarse. “He was making notes on the Man, about what he eats, about the blue flashes. People talked to him, told him things, I don’t know why. They trusted him for some reason.”

  “Yes,” said Fool, picking up another piece of body and putting it in the neat pile they were creating. Blood covered most of his lower body and arms, was thick in his nostrils. The smell of shit, sharper down here in the pit, mingled with the sour odor of the blood. Thin strings of excrement curled around his legs and feet as he went to and fro among the dead, trying to sort and catalog the pieces. The porters, lining the rim of the pit, refused to help, agreeing only to lift the body parts that were too heavy for Fool and Summer to hoist over the edge of the earth slope.

  “He didn’t know much about the Man, but he wrote that he might stretch over all of Hell and that he had done deals with many humans and even a few demons.”

  “Deals?”

  “For information, protection, to sort out a problem. There’s so much we never knew,” Summer said, “so much we never even guessed at. The Man helps people, and then calls in favors later. Revenge, food, information, keeping things for people, he does it all, and not just for humans but for demons as well.”

  And that’
s why Rhakshasas really fears him, thought Fool. Because he has his tendrils wrapped tight around demons as well as humans. How can they trust their demons, when the Man might own them because of some favor he’s done them? In his mind, he saw a demon approaching the Man, wanting some specific kind of flesh, and the Man sourcing it for him out of the Sisters, a trade in bodies and minds and knowledge. And for what end, ultimately? He didn’t know. He would tell Rhakshasas and then let the archdeacons deal with it.

  “What did he find out about the blue flashes?”

  “There’s never been one before, not like these,” Summer replied, lifting a piece of unidentifiable flesh, dripping and torn, and placing it with the rest on the pit’s edge. Tears rolled down her face, slow and steady and inexorable. “Best he could figure, the blue flash is the soul being released not to return to Limbo the way the Flame Garden does, but to go on to wherever souls go to out of Hell. It’s almost the exact reverse of a Fallen, he thought; an Ascension.”

  Fool didn’t reply, simply lifted another piece of a dead and torn human upward, as though offering it to the thickening clouds. They were almost done, finally, the pieces gathered and the mounds they made as neat as could be. After a moment, Summer spoke again.

  “He tried to draw the feather, you know? He couldn’t draw at all, but he made little sketches of it all on one piece of paper, lots of them, over and over.”

  “Really,” said Fool, hand reflexively moving to his inner pocket and then realizing he wasn’t wearing his jacket; it was folded onto the earth away from the blood. Even from here, he thought he could feel the feather, though, calming and smooth and gentle. “Did he write anything about it?”

  “No, there were just pictures,” she said. “Lots of badly drawn little pictures.”

  Another piece of body, leaving only fragments at their feet, and the stink of it in Fool’s nostrils so that he thought he might never be free of it. Another piece, dripping, fragments of bone splintered through the flesh and digging at him like needles, and he lifted and the porters watched impassively and the sky above them turned and did not care.

  “Why didn’t they fight? Or run?” asked Summer.

  “I don’t know,” said Fool. “Perhaps they tried but weren’t strong enough or fast enough.”

  “Perhaps they accepted their deserved fate as sinners,” said Balthazar from above them. Fool looked at the angel, who had appeared without sound. Adam was standing beside him. Elderflower was with them, and Fool thought that the two figures behind the angels were likely the scribe and archive, still faithfully following their masters around.

  “No one deserves this,” said Summer. “They lived in a furrow in a field and something’s torn them apart. This is …” She trailed off, as if she couldn’t find the words large enough or bitter enough to describe it.

  “Is this God’s justice?” asked Fool, standing and gesturing about him at the stained earth. Most of the body parts were up on stretchers now, and only the last few pieces remained for them to sort, floating among the shit in the liquid mud. “Is this what God wants?” He reached down and lifted a long snake of something that might have been intestine from the bloodied ground. It slipped through his fingers and he felt small lumps inside it, the Aruhlian’s food, he supposed, his or her last meal now forever trapped in the tube of gut. Balthazar did not reply but Adam said, “God’s love is even here, although it may take forms that we cannot comprehend.”

  Fool looked about him, wondering where God was hiding. In the mud? In the earthen slope, where tangled roots jutted from the soil? In the shit and blood? It seemed impossible.

  “What happens to them now?” asked Adam when Fool and Summer finally climbed out from the pit, clambering up the sides by sinking their feet and hands into the moist soil and using the roots for stability.

  “They go to be questioned,” said Fool, “assuming Morgan can get anything from bodies in this state.” He thought about the roots and said, “And then I have to visit the Man, to see if he can tell me any more about what he saw, or whether there was anything here of him.”

  “They will be questioned? Have more indignities piled upon them?”

  “They may have seen something and be able to tell us. This is the same murderer, according to the tube, but it’s different. These aren’t Genevieves, and there was more than one. This is frenzied, out of control, and it may have missed something.”

  “Missed something?”

  “Some piece of soul, still in there. Morgan may find it, may be able to speak to it.”

  “How?”

  “There are artisans even in Hell, Adam,” said Elderflower, the first time he had spoken since arriving with the angels. “Morgan and his colleagues have ways of speaking to the souls and the flesh of the dead.”

  “Perhaps I can help,” said Adam and walked over to the pieces of folded tarpaulin laid out on the ground with their damaged contents. The porters moved away, their gaze dropping. One raised his hand to shield his eyes from Adam’s gleam; Fool realized that he no longer saw the light unless it changed or increased, that he had gotten used to looking at both Adam and Balthazar. What did that say about him? he wondered. That he was changing, or becoming hardened? He didn’t know.

  Adam unfolded the corner of one of the tarpaulins, wrapping it back to reveal the corpse of a woman. She was still dressed in a loose jacket and smock, stained with mud and blood. Her head was twisted around and tilted, her broken neck bones bulging under her skin. Adam knelt and placed one hand on the dead woman’s head. His dark robes trailed in the mud, his light increasing, and then he rose and said, “No. There is nothing left.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No. This poor thing and all her companions are gone; this is all that remains. Mere flesh.”

  “Still,” said Fool, “I should like Morgan to at least view them. He may have some skills learned from Hell that may be useful.”

  “No. They should suffer no further indignities,” said Balthazar, stepping forward. He raised one hand and he gleamed, as bright as Heaven, brighter, the light rushing through red and becoming an inferno of white and glaring, forcing Fool to turn away. He heard one of the porters moan, and then the light was gone, leaving ghosts of itself crawling in his vision. When he turned back, greasy smoke, gray in the evening light, billowed from under the sheets of tarpaulin. Fool watched as the woman’s head, at the center of a wash of whiteness, began to smile. No, not smiling, it was her flesh shriveling as though being burned without actually burning, the hair tangling up and vanishing, her lips pulling back, her eyelids sparking to nothing, her eyes boiling and then evaporating. Her skin peeled back to reveal the muscle and then bone beneath, and then they, too, were aflame, crumbling down to dust, and then she was gone. The other tarpaulins bulged and rose as harsh blue light and palls of smoke poured out from under them and then mud around Fool’s feet bubbled briefly as the blood steamed and evaporated. The stench of something scalded filled the air and he heard someone vomit.

  “They were the property of Hell,” said Elderflower when the burning had stopped.

  “Yes,” said Balthazar, “and I gave them release.”

  “Which is not your responsibility.”

  “No,” said Adam, “and he will be spoken to about this act. Heaven will take ten more souls to compensate Hell for its loss.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Acceptable,” said Elderflower. “Shall we go? We are done here and should rest. There are more Elevations to discuss tomorrow.”

  19

  “It wasn’t there,” said Fool. “It was somewhere else. It killed again, more this time. Where did it go? Where will it go next?”

  The Man did not reply in words but his many limbs lifted and rustled around Fool, the mouthed things turning toward him and opening and closing aggressively. “You expect me to predict the future for you, little Fool, little man?” came the leathery voice eventually. “To tell you the what and where of things? No, Fool, y
ou are my amusement, nothing more. I gave you the information I had, but what you do with it is your business.”

  “I went to the Heights,” said Fool. He was angry again, the stench of the dead Aruhlians still thick in his nose despite the fact he had slept, washed, and changed his clothes since wading around in their remains. He had attended the morning’s discussions in the Assemblies House ballroom, bored, listening to the trading. Souls going upward, extra slotted in for Balthazar’s indiscretion, bartered and bought and sold. Looking through the grimy windows and the roiling, ever-moving crowd, he had kept his face still and raged inside. What was it, this demon that seemed to slip through Hell’s streets unnoticed? That could slaughter apparently at will? Had nobody seen anything?

  After the meeting, Fool met with Summer before going to the Man. She had spent the morning asking people, scattering messages printed on thin paper on the trains asking for help, had pinned more of her pictures of Diamond on walls all around the Houska, but had received no responses other than dismissal.

  “It’s strange,” she told Fool. “Normally, I think that people do know but they won’t say, but now I think they genuinely don’t know. The demons left me alone and let me talk to people; people weren’t aggressive with me. The opposite, really; it felt like they wanted to help but just couldn’t. Even Gordie would have struggled, I think.”

  So, no one had seen anything, no one knew anything; even the dead remained silent, their lips torn apart but sealed. He knew as little now as he did when he and Gordie had found the first corpse.

  No, that wasn’t quite true. He knew that it was a demon so old and powerful that even other demons were likely to fear it, that it had no interest in fucking but only the violence it could inflict, that it tore the souls of the dead loose and consumed them in its frenzy. There’s more, thought Fool, more I know, more I have learned. I know it takes only those who are alone, which must mean it can be seen but simply doesn’t want to be. Why? Because it must have some fear of being recognized, or caught, which means it can be caught. Genevieves are the perfect victims because they have so many demons in their lives, spend so long alone with them, that one demon must blend into another after a while.