by Pavel Kornev
But it wasn't I who killed him, not at all. The constable's innards had been devoured by the curse. My imagination had only given a slight nudge to the gaunt knacker. He was already racing to hell by the time I got to him.
Billy was a tougher nut to crack, though. He sat down next to his friend, made sure of his death, then, as if in slow motion, got up from his knees and suddenly threw up his carbine.
"God damn..."
A shot rang out and a shower of blood started pumping from Billy's head. A few seconds later, the constable collapsed next to his dead colleague.
"Damned morphine addict!" cursed Inspector White, finally aiming the smoking Hydra away from Elizabeth-Maria. He ended up pointing it at me, though. "Drop your pistol, Leo! Or, I swear, I'll put a hole in your knee!"
Morphine! But of course! The constable's calm demeanor and immunity to fear were caused by a drug! He didn't even feel pain!
"Drop it now!" Robert shouted out again, and it became clear that if I delayed even a brief second longer, he would simply shoot me in the leg.
I laid my Roth-Steyr on the floor, slowly pushed it away with the tip of my shoe and reminded him:
"We could still go our separate ways..."
"I've already sacrificed my men," Robert mumbled in a deadened voice and shook his left arm, unfolding his pocketknife in a blistering motion. "Think what I could do to your bride. But, in order not to draw out this farce, I'll count. And when I get to three, either you give me the right answer, or..."
"Finish. You have my permission," I winced and turned my head from side to side, chasing away the image of the girl, all lovely and fragile.
"What?" The inspector was taken aback as he suddenly felt his fist being stroked by the graceful fingers of Elizabeth-Maria.
His hand, sliced off by her claws, plopped onto the floor together with the pistol. Robert White tried to get away from the succubus and even managed to get a swipe in with his knife, but the infernal creature, in a motion untraceable by the human eye, got up close to him and gave him a sharp cut from bottom to top! He was ripped apart from groin to throat, gutted like a dead fish.
His blood gushed out, and the inspector fell to his knees. The succubus slid over to him on her back. She clenched her long fingers around his neck, so her sharp nails pierced the skin and, drop by drop, she began squeezing the last traces of life from her victim.
I didn't turn away and watched until the very end. I had killed the inspector, after all. I did it, no one else.
Did I feel bad for him?
I do not know. We live in a cruel world, and its main rule is kill or be killed. Mercy? Mercy is for the weak...
Then the succubus left the lacerated body in peace and, with a light dancing step, headed toward me. There was not even a trace left of the once sweet Elizabeth-Maria: her face had lengthened and become pale-white, her eyes had fallen in and were burning in the vermilion flames of the underworld. Her thin lips no longer covered up the razor-sharp teeth that filled up her mouth, either. Her blood-spattered robe flew further open with every step she took, revealing the taught skin over her ribs and a pair of small breasts with black pimples instead of nipples. Her thin fingers remained as graceful as ever, but now they were crowned with long nails of an unpleasant-steely color.
Well, they would have been that color if it weren't for the blood on them...
"Scram!" I commanded the infernal beast, throwing my jacket on the table and beginning to roll back my shirt sleeves. "You are free! Go back to the underworld!"
"My sweet Leo," the succubus laughed quietly and licked a droplet of blood from her upper lip with her split-end tongue. "It can't be that you no longer need my services, right? Believe me, I have a lot I could teach you..."
"To hell with you!" I burst into a scream. "You cannot break our agreement!"
"Stupid," the otherworldly creature shook her head. "You're so hopelessly in love with your Elizabeth-Maria. You spend so much time daydreaming of her, but she'll never be yours. I could be, though. Just imagine me..."
"Get away!" I sharply threw in, taking out my knife with a meaningful look.
The infernal creature, took a step back upon seeing the titanium blade, but immediately got herself together and reminded me:
"Leo, you cannot harm me. Do not forget, we have an agreement..."
"It didn't even enter my thoughts," I grinned, picking up one of the kerosene lamps and hurrying for the gap in the far wall. "Scram!" I shouted, before lowering my head and vanishing into the hole.
It wasn't a good idea to have dealings with a succubus, but to be honest, I simply wasn't left with any other choice than to cut a deal with her. I really had been so hopelessly stupid as to try to make an impression on the inspector general’s daughter, and had turned for help to my poet friend. As any normal person could have predicted, he blew my secret around the whole town.
If the real truth had gotten out, Friedrich von Nalz would have barbecued me low and slow!
And I found a way out. With my talent, otherworldly creatures were like soft clay. I could mold them into whatever I needed. And thus I had molded this succubus into a sweet-looking girl, my bride. When I came upon her, I was already anticipating the inspector general’s reaction, so I suggested we make a deal. But now, it had all gone too far...
"You're gonna miss me, Leo!" I heard a silvery smile behind my back.
I didn't answer, though. I got to the fork in the path and turned to the underground chapel. I set my weapon down on one of the stone benches, straining to hold back a tremble when uneven glimmers began appearing on the stone-sculpture fallen one.
Sculpture? It surely wasn't that...
The winged creature, half-buried-in a wall, was hanging over me, pressing down with its dead majesty, trying to slowly but irreversibly burst out into reality from the bottomless pit he had been confined to years and years ago. The snow-white marble began glowing from the inside and started turning into flesh. His wings erupted in the finest hair of even rows of silver feathers. His chest shuddered as if straining to take a breath.
Then I hurriedly cast my gaze to the floor, and bit my lip until it bled, cleansing my consciousness of the mental effects of the stone-entombed creature. Fortunately, the fallen one did not manage to latch into my consciousness, and its luster slightly diminished.
When the shadows in the chapel grew thick once again and were just barely being held back by the dull light of the kerosene lamp, I walked up close to the sculpture, placed my palm on its stone chest and felt it. That's it! I felt a few heart beats!
With every bump, I could feel the blade of someone else's will being driven deeper and deeper into my mind; the fallen one had removed all my mental blocks in a rapid tsunami, demanding he be freed from his stony prison at once. But now, there was no need for that. I myself wanted to become the very key to unlock the door for him and release him into our reality.
Intoxicated with power, I dreamed of the majesty of those whose wings had once covered the horizon, blotted out the sun and turned day into night from horizon to horizon. I dreamed of their power and might. I thirsted to be like them...
Oh, right!
Scorching razors of pain dug into my head. The aftershocks of a greatness unknown to humankind practically knocked me from my feet with a crashing swell. Any contraction of my heart was answered with the strike of a blacksmith's hammer in my hand, still pressed to its marble chest.
And the fallen one awoke! His consciousness had just burst forth from the unfathomable abyss, while his body had already begun casting off its stone fetters. Starting from its left palm, a blinding light began shining forth from the whole sculpture. The metamorphosis my imagination started began turning the snow-white marble into flesh that burned with a fierce flame.
The statue shook. A spider web of cracks began running along the walls, floor and ceiling; my clenched-shut eyes were shaking, preparing to reveal the horrifying gaze of the fallen creature, but I did not wait for that, instead jer
king my burning palm away from the statue and striking it with my knife.
I struck it, and the thin titanium blade slipped easily between his ribs!
The floor under my feet began to waver. The cracks began widening. A shard of stone wriggled out of the ceiling. The fallen one was cowering in agony. Boiling blood was gushing from the wound onto his fingers. With an incendiary flame, it flowed down his arm, but I kept widening the cut more and more, mangling its yielding flesh with my weapon.
The fallen are invulnerable, sure! Copper, bronze, silver, obsidian, tempered steel and lead couldn't harm them whatsoever. But titanium...
Titanium was unknown to the fallen. They had no defense against it! In pure form, titanium was discovered at the very end of their lengthy reign. And, at that time, scientists were no longer rushing to share their discoveries with their immortal sovereigns.
The Night of Titanium Blades was a night they were not fated to survive...
I struck him again with my sharp blade. Then again, and again.
His caustic blood flowed down my arms. And it wasn't even blood, but pure, unclouded power! It made my skin burn in unbearable pain; my knife slipped out of my numbed fingers, but nothing could stop me now. I stuck both my hands into the horrible wound, felt the jerkily beating heart and ripped it out of his chest in one motion. The fallen one winced. His metamorphosis was interrupted before it could finish, and in one moment his body turned to ash.
Stones were falling from the ceiling, and I shot off out of the chapel. Just after I'd leaped out into the hall, behind me rushed a frightening cloud of dust-saturated air. Clenching the bright beaming heart in my hand, I charged down the tunnel, but, fortunately, the only thing to collapse was the chapel. The supports down the tunnel held out and were left with nothing but thin streams of sand that accumulated in places.
But I still didn't slow down at all, and when I got to the hole into the basement, I almost fell. The last thing I wanted was to be entombed under a heap of stones holding a singed heart that wouldn’t stop pounding, pounding and pounding, driving me mad with its fell impropriety.
"Ugh, no thank you," I muttered and suddenly turned to stone, noticing the infernal creature looking out for me at the exit.
The succubus tore herself from counting the bank notes that had been taken from the inspector's leather wallet and smiled craftily:
"Leo, my boy, why do you look so surprised? We did have an agreement, after all, didn't we? You can't really have been hoping to get away from your other half so... easily, right? Please, let's have a bit more fun! We'll have a wildly good time; don't you dare doubt it!"
Part Two
Muse
Sublime Electricity and A Full-Aluminum Jacket
1
HAPPY PEOPLE ARE ALL ALIKE, but every unhappy person is unhappy in their own way.
That is what they say, right?
Oh well, nothing to be surprised by. The average person’s dreams are impossibly ephemeral: self-sufficiency, love, and longevity. Power.
Fears are something else entirely. As a rule, people have a perfect understanding of what exactly they're afraid of. And those things are not banal, or common to everyone, either. No, every one of us has, concealed within ourselves, our very own unique flaw.
I personally, since childhood, could not bear basements, especially the icehouse cum cellar of my father's estate.
It was cold and dark with piles of dirty-gray ice everywhere. The flame of a kerosene lamp couldn't even try to drive off the darkness; the flame would tremble into nothing behind the glass, like a little fiery moth trapped in a jar, while evil shadows encroached from all sides. But at the entrance, the door was thickened and unwieldy, totally frosted over from the inside.
If you were behind that, it wouldn't matter how loud you screamed, or strained your vocal cords. You'd never get help, and I was feeling just such an urge to slam it shut. And not just to slam it, but to get a lock for it, fill it with nails and hang something unwieldy over it.
A nice heavy safe? Yes, a safe would do the trick...
Elizabeth-Maria could feel my pensive gaze with her back and turned around.
"Leo!" the girl frowned and shook her head in reproach. "You can't possibly have thought some old door would hold me back, could you?"
And she was right: putting my trust in oak boards and cold iron would have been at the very least naive on my part. I sighed hopelessly and began descending the hoar-frost coated steps. In one hand, the dull light of a kerosene lamp was shimmering, and in the other, there was a friction-top glass jar glowing. And though they didn't especially do much against the darkness, I couldn't even imagine walking around my basement without any light. Too scary.
"Leo!" the girl hurried me along, taking the box of fresh provisions to the very farthest corner. "What's taking you so long?"
"I'm coming! Coming!" I called back in annoyance and finally stepped onto the stone floor.
Along all the walls, there towered piles of ice chunks, which had yet to thaw out since being placed there fifteen years earlier. And the cold that reigned down here penetrated my jacket, forcing me to give a nervous burning shiver. Elizabeth-Maria on the other hand, wearing her light around-the-house frock, didn't seem to mind the frost one bit.
"What's it like down there?" I asked the succubus, much to my own surprise.
"Cold," the girl replied, but immediately turned to me and clarified: "Wait, down where? What do you mean, Leo?"
"Hell! By 'down there,' I meant 'hell.'" I squeezed out a nervous smile with my completely numb lips.
The succubus started laughing uncontrollably.
"My boy," she shook her head, drying the tears that had come into the corners of her eyes. "Try explaining what the Universe is to an ant! Tell a fish about outer space! If you can get them to understand you, come back to me and ask about the underworld. I mean no offense, but the human brain simply isn't capable of containing such knowledge. Everything in good time. Take that as a given."
I got into a huff and couldn't resist an evil grin:
"It probably wouldn't be nice to be trapped in the body of an ant. What do you think?"
Elizabeth-Maria thought, then nodded.
"That would impose certain limits, yes," she agreed.
"So then, could it be that you are not currently in proper form to envision the underworld yourself?" I continued, doing nothing to hide my malevolence. "Incarnation in this world did not deprive the fallen of their supernatural essence. Just with their presence, they were able to change the laws of reality, but you... You're still just a human."
"You can't make me angry," the succubus smiled, having unraveled my simple trick. "Leo, dear! I will not break the agreement, nor harm you. Ever."
"Forever is a very long time," I smirked. "Why not go back to the underworld right now?"
"Pish," Elizabeth-Maria screwed up her face, "coming back without any worthy trophies is bad form, my dear."
"While you're with me, you're not hunting for people. The agreement..."
"I wasn't even thinking of it," the succubus assured me. "Why take the risk, allowing you to jump off the hook? The soul of an illustrious gentleman pays back any waiting with interest."
I scraped my teeth in impotent rage.
"And also," the girl pressed up practically against my skin, "I do not think the waiting will be quite as long as you do."
"We'll see!" I grinned in response, placing the jar on the floor. Beams of bright light began issuing forth through the frosty glass.
The measured beats of the fallen one's heart stopped causing pain in my scorched hands, but right after I began scooping the sharp, cold shards aside, my fingers immediately lost any sensitivity. Nevertheless, I dug quite deep into the packed pile of frozen chunks before placing the jar in it and covering it from the top with more ice.
Elizabeth-Maria threw a lock of her red hair from her forehead and warned:
"In that we cannot afford to hire a cook, I'll have to prep
are it myself..."
"Have you eaten your fill of human meat?" I snapped, filling the pail with broken ice and heading for the stairs.
"I had to take advantage of the opportunity," Elizabeth-Maria shrugged her shoulders and laughed uncontrollably: "Broaden your horizons, Leo, while you still have the chance! It will have a very positive effect on the value of your soul..."
I stopped on the top stair, intending to quip back, but nothing smart came to mind, so I simply waved my hand and left the basement. My glasses were immediately covered with condensation; I removed them and stuck them into my breast pocket.
The girl came out after me, squeezing a paper bag in her hands, and shouted:
"Don't be late for dinner."
"I hope you haven't wasted all the money on provisions." I admonished her, dropping the basement door in place.
"And what if I have? You are the one who demanded I not touch the dead man's wallet, isn't that right?"
"I've had a change of heart."
"Have a look at the desk by the entry," Elizabeth-Maria then hinted.
In a small vase on the upper floor, I discovered a pair of rumpled twenties and a brand new ten; I popped them into my wallet with my stiff fingers, went into the cleaning room and, plugging the down pipe with a wooden stopper, emptied the bucket of ice into the sink. After that, I removed my jacket, rolled up my shirt sleeve and assessed the damage to my arms. On my skin, from my hands to my elbows, the crimson pustules of the Diabolic Plague had broken through. Their luster was no dimmer than the flame of a kerosene lamp, but they burned worse than even that.
Curses!
In its time, the Diabolic Plague had done in practically half of the first generation of illustrious, and it was hardly possible that anyone in the Empire had ever had to go through an attack of it two times!
