Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel

by Gareth Jefferson Jones K. W. Jeter

  A fragment of the answer came into his consciousness, the dark ebbing from a corner of his memory, as though the freight platform’s searing halogen beams had managed to penetrate his skull. He had come back here to kill somebody—that much he could remember. Which was enough for now. The knowledge comforted him. Now all he had to do was find someplace to sleep off the weariness of his long traveling, and the rest would come to him in the morning. It always did.

  Shouts and yelling broke into his thoughts. From somewhere farther down the platform, where there weren’t any lights, just the shadows of crates and boxes that had been plundered and abandoned so long ago that they slouched together like damp straw huts in a moonless forest. The shouts weren’t the fun kind but instead shrieked with panic.

  He swiveled around to look. For a moment, it seemed to him as though the storm itself had come onto the platform, its wind rolling across the concrete. A torrent of fluttering rags surged between the freight containers, heading toward him. It took another second for him to see the fear-contorted faces, and realize that the cries came from their mouths.

  “They’re cleaning us out!” The rags were men, or what had been men, but were now just the homeless creatures who found what shelter they could in the station’s unlit tunnels and corners. “Tons of ’em!” The nearest, his running gimped by an improvised crutch under his skinny bare arm, locked a panicked stare into Blake’s eyes. “Run! Go!”

  A tide of other homeless men crashed over the emaciated figure; their rag-swaddled feet trampled over his back. Blake let them sweep by, then looked down to see what they had left behind. The cripple, facedown, was still breathing, red leaking from his mouth and bubbling with each panting gasp. Blake reached down and pulled the broken figure to his feet. The wet sounds from the homeless man’s mouth were no longer words; he clawed himself away from Blake’s chest, and flopped birdlike after the rest of the ragged pack.

  Blake peered into the darkness from which the homeless had burst into view. The platform was quiet again, but he knew they were still around, probably cowering under the freight carriages and peeking out at him, to see what he would do. Which was to turn and step into that dark, just to see what had spooked them all so bad.

  It was still a mystery, even when he stood in the middle of the homeless men’s abandoned encampment. Water leaked through the soot and grime of the tunnel’s low roof, pattering like soft finger touches on the cobbled-together shelters, the cardboard boxes with nests of rags inside, the sleeping bags so begrimed with filth and the sweat of bad dreams that they shone in the trace of light like cocoons of black silk. Food rubbish, plastic bags, and little Styrofoam boxes scavenged out of the city’s alley Dumpsters drifted to his ankles as he stepped through the crowded space. A cooking fire smoldered in the center of the boxes, a mold-spotted potato skewed on a length of rebar propped above it.

  Blake heard more shouts coming from farther down the tunnel. These running steps were hard-soled, though, and the shouts rang with the fierce pleasure that came with clenched fists and truncheons snapping bones.

  “There’s one! Get the filthy bastard!”

  He saw another pack of men, younger, not yet broken by time and the world, running toward him. Their shaved heads shone as bright as the knobbed toes of their cherry-red bovver boots, khaki fatigues tucked inside the tight, shin-high laces. Spittle flecked their yelling mouths, and their wide-open, excited eyes glistened with the joy of anticipated carnage.

  Blake didn’t move, just watched impassively as the skinheads charged toward him.

  “Mess him up, Charlie!”

  The first one’s suspenders tightened over his sleeveless T-shirt as he skidded to a stop less than a yard away, braced himself, then swung a dented baseball bat in a flat arc toward Blake’s ribs.

  “God-damn—” The skinhead’s eyes widened farther as he gawped in amazement. The blow hadn’t hit its mark, but had been stopped instead by the palm of Blake’s outstretched hand. The force of the impact traveled back up the bat, hard enough to nearly throw the skinhead off his feet.

  “Whuddaya screwing around for?” One of the skinhead’s companions shrieked in fury. “Get him!”

  Blake plucked the bat from the skinhead’s white-knuckled fists as easily as pulling a twig from a shoulder-high tree. He swung the big end up and set it between the skinhead’s goggling eyes. A short, fast jab sent the thug toppling backward, blood streaming down from the crushed bridge of his pug nose.

  It seemed sad to Blake that these kids didn’t have as much sense as the Yard Bulls, who had at least known when to leave well enough alone. If they had turned tail and run, either dragging their buddy with them or leaving him where he lay, they might have had a better evening of it.

  Instead, their howls rang louder and more outraged against the bricks of the tunnel’s roof. Eyes reddened, the tight pack clawed and scrabbled at each other’s tangling arms in their haste to throw themselves on him.

  More shouts sounded, coming from another direction. He turned his head and saw another tunnel branching off from this one, filled with another churning pack, their weapons waved above their bald heads as they ran to join the party.

  He brought his gaze back around in time to lay his forearm across the mouth of the first one to reach him, breaking the yellow teeth to stumps and sending the skinhead staggering back against the others, gagging on his own blood and ripped tongue. Blake’s hand shot up, grabbing the nail-studded slat swinging down toward his skull. He wrenched it from another skinhead’s grasp and brought it around hard across two of their faces, tearing open one’s jaw before imbedding the bloodied nail into the other’s neck.

  That didn’t slow down the rest; he hadn’t thought it would. It never did. The second pack was racing toward him now. Their shouts were mingled with giddy laughter.

  “We got ya now, asshole!”

  True enough—they had spread out across the width of the platform as they ran, pushing and kicking aside the smaller crates, swarming houndlike over the bigger ones. Their black-nailed hands clawed toward him—

  But caught nothing. Stupefied, the skinheads gaped as the beggar ran up the tunnel wall, the ragged hem of his overcoat fluttering behind him. Before they could react, he had already grabbed two by their necks, cracking their skulls against each other. As they dropped, a spinning kick, launched higher than Blake’s own head, smashed bloody the faces of another pair.

  The others finally reacted—but not before Blake was able to dive past their outstretched arms. He landed yards away, poised for only a split second on his fingertips and the balls of his feet, then leapt from the concrete’s edge and onto the iron tracks. A solid wall of freight train loomed ahead, trapping him as the combined packs rushed close behind him—

  Blake didn’t slow. Instead, he dove shoulder-first toward the sharp-edged wheels, swinging his cracked leather boots above his own head with enough velocity to set him in a horizontal run across the locked carriage door. Rain fell in the skinheads’ faces as they stared up at him. He bent his knees and kicked himself away from the carriage, hurtling above the shaved heads and landing in a crouch behind them.

  They didn’t have time enough to turn around. He grabbed the necks of the two at the rear of the pack, hard enough to hear bone crack like thick-shelled eggs. That gave him enough room to launch a roundhouse kick, dropping another pair. A steel rod swept toward his knees, missing him by inches as he sprang upward. The rod clanged on the platform as he dove forward, catching the attacker with a forearm under the chin and crushing his trachea. He dropped the gagging body in time to whip his elbow into the next one’s face, a blossom of red bursting from where the nose and mouth had been.

  One of the remaining skins snatched up the steel rod and drove its end toward Blake’s gut. He fell backward to avoid the rod, then spun onto his side as it arced down, grazing the back of his skull before its tip sent shards flying from the concrete. He rolled back onto his spine and grabbed the rod, yanking the skinhead off hi
s feet and catching him with a heel to the gut. Red vomit spattered Blake’s ragged trouser leg, the skinhead’s eyes rolling blank as he dropped like a punctured balloon.

  There were only a couple still in front of him, the others having turned and fled back through the homeless camp. A simple uppercut took out one of them, who had been too stunned even before that to scurry away. That left Blake, knuckles scraped raw by broken teeth and bone fragments, gazing at a skinny runt in a stained undershirt, barely old enough to shave.

  “Kid…” It had been so long since he had spoken out loud that his voice rasped deep in his throat. “You just standing there isn’t making me any happier.”

  The young skinhead just trembled and covered his ashen face with his hands.

  Have it your way. He obliged the kid by picking him up, hoisting him over his head, and tossing him onto the railway tracks. The kid bounced once, then scampered away. Blake watched him, then turned back toward the empty platform.

  He figured it would be morning before the homeless recovered enough courage to come creeping out from beneath the wooden freight carriages and back to their cardboard hovels. That would give him at least a few hours use of the warmest nest he could find, to sleep off the fatigue from his long traveling and the fight with the skinheads. And maybe something to eat—the recalled vision of the potato charring on a stick roused a grumble in his empty stomach.

  Just how tired he was didn’t register until he got jumped again. If his senses hadn’t been dulled, he might have heard them coming up from behind. But before he knew it, as he was leaning down to lift the flap of one of the empty cardboard boxes and check the rags inside for lice, the back of his skull seemed to explode in a red-tinged, shimmering wave. Teeth clenched against the dizzying pain, he turned his head enough to see his attacker, face crusted with blood from the struggle before, whipping the steel rod down for another blow. It caught him on his ear and one side of his jaw; he could feel the rebound against his skull as he toppled onto his back.

  Another skinhead planted knees on his chest and a choking hand at his throat. A nasty little short-bladed knife drove toward his ribs.

  He avoided the knife by rolling onto his shoulder, shoving aside the rags and cardboard box. The blade missed his chest, driving through the front and back of his overcoat instead, the sharp metal point pinning the grime-darkened cloth to a crack in the platform.

  With the last of his strength, Blake lurched forward onto his knees. The pain and blood from before was nothing to what happened next. The skin over his rib cage ripped away, the raw muscles beneath clenching in torment.

  The two skinheads backed up, gazing wide-eyed at the sight before them. The rod dropped clanging onto the platform.

  With the sound of ripping gristle, Blake staggered to his feet. Still pinned to the concrete, the red-drenched overcoat tore from his shoulder and dangling arm, revealing how it and the raw flesh beneath were fastened together, as though some demented surgeon had imagined himself a tailor, combining skin and cloth into a garment that could never be shed.

  The pain wiped out all of Blake’s thoughts. He might have stopped before, when the gangs had run away—but not now. Now it was too late.

  His blood-spattered hand shot forward, grabbing one skinhead by the throat. He squeezed until he could feel the cartilage grinding and snapping, then slung the dead body like a club, knocking the other figure to the ground. He ground his boot into the second one’s face, until the hands stopped clawing at his leg and dropped away, lifeless.

  Blake slumped down onto his knees, in the widening pool of his own blood. He had just enough strength left to tug the overcoat free from the knife, then wrap the joined cloth and flesh tighter about himself, his fist clenched just above the pounding of his heart.

  He let his head drop, eyes fluttering closed. The groan of pain and despair from his whitening lips was all that was needed to damn the curse that had made him this way.

  3.

  Only a madman would tend a garden in weather such as this.

  The dark storm clouds hung low in the sky, filling every direction visible to the naked eye, from one horizon beyond the city’s tall office towers to the masses of craggy hills that ranged even farther in the distance. Rain pelted down, hammering the streets as well as the people and cars on them. The gutters ran like rivers, swift and engulfing, the muddied waters sloshing across the sidewalks and into the doorsteps of the grey buildings. Yet somehow there were never enough streaming torrents to wash away all of the city’s filth and grime. The rain sluiced down along the buildings, leaving them just as filthy and blackened with soot as before.

  The madman was so lost in the swirling tatters of his thoughts that he might not even have felt the lash of the rain upon his bent back. Through close-shaven stubble, his scalp shone pale and wet as he scrabbled through the contents of the frayed gunnysack at his feet.

  With elaborate, methodical care, the madman set out the elements of his rituals. From the sack, he took out a child’s toy, a plastic action figure, worn and scuffed. Something that he had rescued from a rubbish can set out at the curb. The broken ends of a wooden toothpick had been stuck to the doll’s forehead, giving it what might have been horns. The plastic skin of the toy’s face had been painstakingly colored red with a marker. One of its feet had been snapped off and replaced with the cloven hoof of a farm-toy goat. The madman knelt down and set the ugly figure in place, digging its plastic feet into the wet ground so it would stand menacingly upright.

  There was still more to be set out for the madman’s devotions to be complete. He dug more small figures from the sack, then knelt down with them at one side of a massive peach tree at the center of the garden square. Its withered, leafless branches raked like skeletal fingers through the rain-filled air above his head. When he stood back up, three more plastic action figures stood on the rain-soaked ground. Rescued from the trash, each now held a twig in its small, upraised hands, as though brandishing a weapon. The madman stepped back, nodding his head in approval of the miniature tableau.

  “You know that tree’s dead, don’t you?”

  The voice wasn’t one of those that nattered and yelped inside the madman’s head. Even he could tell that these words were real. Anyone in the deserted square might have heard them.

  Startled, the madman looked back over his hunched shoulder. Across the sodden rubbish and brown weeds straggling up between the paving stones, a figure sat on one of the broken benches at the side. Vandals’ boots had broken apart the bench’s wooden planks, leaving just space enough for one person to sit. The dim moonlight that managed to slide through the shafts of rain revealed only the glint of blue eyes watching the madman.

  “You’d better get away from there—” The madman didn’t like having his private rituals observed. “Before you get yourself in trouble.”

  “Trouble?” The figure sitting on the bench sounded amused. “What kind of trouble?”

  The madman dragged his gunnysack closer to the blackened trunk of the dead tree.

  “This place is dangerous,” the madman muttered darkly. “He doesn’t like people coming in without his permission.”

  “He?” A fragment of a smile emerged in the darkness. “Who exactly are you talking about, old man?”

  “Him!” The madman could tell that he was being mocked. Face set in quivering anger, he pointed to the red-faced, cloven-hoofed toy figure imbedded in the ground. “If he sees you here, you’re done for. I can promise you that!”

  “But how would he see me?”

  “From up there, you idiot!” The madman pointed beyond the figure sitting on the bench, to the black office tower at one side of the garden square.

  The figure on the bench didn’t bother to look up. “What’s that thing sticking out of his chest?” He nodded toward the horned doll in front of the peach tree. “Is that a nail?”

  “That’s because they killed him!” The madman’s voice rose in demented triumph. “Look—it’s gone right throu
gh him.” He snatched up the doll and held it out before himself. With the thumb and forefinger of his other hand, he grasped the iron nail that had been thrust into it. The plastic squeaked as he pulled the nail out a bit, then shoved it back in. “With a great big spear—just like this! Killed the evil bastard dead!”

  In the shadows at the side of the garden square, a scowl replaced the smile on the watching figure’s face.

  “Killed him?” A sneer sounded in his voice. “But I thought he lives in that building? How can he do that if he’s dead?”

  “I … I don’t know,” muttered the madman. He pawed at the side of his head, as though he could somehow dig through the bone of his skull and release some of the chaotic images trapped inside. “It’s all … mixed up. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet. But it will!” His eyes shone with absolute certainty. “I know it will! I can see it! As clear as I can see you sitting there! It’s all true—I know it is!”

  “And who is it…” The watching figure’s voice softened as he studied the madman crouched near the dead pear tree. “Who’s going to kill him?”

  “The three of them, of course—who else? Look—can’t you see them?” With demented certainty, the madman squatted down and laid the red-faced doll at the other toys’ feet, the fatal nail sticking up from its chest.

  “Just like that! That’s how they did it! That’s how it’ll be!” The madman gazed down at the toys, fixated by the depiction of their victory. “This one here—” He tapped a dirty fingertip on the nearest one’s plastic head. “This one’s name is Courage!” His hand moved to the next. “And this is Self-Sacrifice!”