Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel

by Gareth Jefferson Jones K. W. Jeter

  Something happened, though. On the third night, while he was waiting for the insurgents’ return. Crouched in his bloodstained cage, he nodded in fitful sleep, shifting between dream and waking. Sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference. That was the case when he lifted his head and gazed out through the bars. The candles guttering on the shelves and ledges suddenly glowed brighter, their narrow flames reaching like golden threads toward the ceiling. Bright as daylight, as though in his dream he had turned his open eyes toward the sun.…

  “Hello, Blake.” A voice, soft and soothing, spoke aloud. “I’m here to rescue you. If you’ll accept my help.”

  He brought his face close to the bars, peering at the figure of the man who had appeared before him. Elegantly dressed, a cashmere jacket visible beneath the unbuttoned overcoat. A real gentleman, with the wealthy’s easy smile and charm. It was only the misshapen, heavy-soled shoe that spoiled the man’s appearance.

  “I … know you.” The thought prickled the hair along Blake’s forearms. His mind overflowed with dark memories from his life in the slums. “Or at least … I heard stories about you, back when I was a kid.” He pointed to the clubbed shoe, and the cloven hoof that was reported to be inside it. “But I didn’t believe you were real back then.”

  Or maybe … He thought about another possibility. Maybe this is still a dream?

  “No. It’s not a dream, Blake,” the Devil said, reading his thoughts. “And luckily for you, it’s not a nightmare, either.” His clubbed shoe scraped on the ground as he approached the cage. “I’m really here. And I’m here to help.”

  Blake moved his face back from the bars as far as it would go. He looked over to Adeeb, but the boy was sound asleep against the wall. “What do you mean, help?”

  The Devil crouched down to face him. “Friday prayers are over, and those murderers will soon be back here to cut off your head. But if you’ll trust me, and do exactly as I say, I can get you out of this and back to your barracks.”

  “To my barracks?” That brought a sudden laugh from deep inside Blake’s throat. “Do you think I’m stupid? If you’re really who I think you are, then the only reason you’re here is to steal my soul. But you won’t get it. Even if I have to die to keep it, my soul is mine.”

  “You’re right, of course—” The Devil’s eyes glittered in the wavering light from the massed candles. “But you’re also wrong. I do often trick people into parting with that most precious thing inside them. And under normal circumstances, I’d love nothing more than to carry off your gleaming soul. But that’s not the reason why I’m here now. It isn’t my greed for souls that’s brought me to you, but my pride.”

  “Your pride?”

  “Oh, yes…” A sneer twisted a corner of the other’s mouth. “Poets have written whole books about how proud I am. So it should come as no surprise to you that I take my reputation very seriously. Ultimately, I’m here for myself tonight as much as for you.”

  Blake eyed him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

  “Simply put, I’m here because you were born and raised in my city. I know those slums where you grew up like the back of my hand. They are my slums. I made them. Most of the people you grew up with serve me daily. And in return for that service, they receive protection from me, no matter where they go.”

  “So, what does that have to do with me?”

  “Well…” The Devil fixed him with his sulphurous eyes. “It happens to be a well-known fact in certain circles that no one is permitted to kill a child of my city without my express consent. That’s what helps to keep my people satisfied, and under my control.” He gestured contemptuously to the cage and the video equipment around it. “But this here … This flies in the face of my authority.” The Devil moved his body closer, his voice lower and more intimate. “If they were going to murder you on the quiet, Blake, I wouldn’t be bothering with you. But the fact is, these butchers aim to transmit your dying screams around the whole globe. If people back in my city learn of that, and realize that I’ve been powerless to stop one of their own brothers from being slaughtered like a pig, how do you think they’ll react?” He shook his head, appalled at the thought. “My authority over them would be weakened for years to come.”

  Blake felt his gut go hollow at the mention of his slaughter. The candles’ flames wavered as a bone-chilling draft touched the air. “So you’re saying that this is somehow all to do … with you?”

  “I’m saying that strange as it seems, our fates are linked together on this one. Which is why I need to free you.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Adeeb was still asleep in the corner, then turned back to Blake. “I need to get you out of here in one piece and back to your barracks. And in order for me to do that, I need you to trust me.” The Devil’s manicured fingers waved the objection away. “It’s hard, I know. But if you insist upon it, I even promise not to shake your hand, or offer you any other kind of contract so long as we’re together.”

  As a sign of good faith, the Devil made a gesture with his hand. The rusted padlock fell from the outside of the cage to the floor. Then the manacles parted from around Blake’s wrists and ankles. He stared at them lying in the dust at his feet, then looked up as the cage’s door swung open.

  “But in return…” said the Devil, “I’ll need your complete cooperation. Before it’s too late.”

  Blake could almost feel the Devil’s words setting a hook in his thoughts. He glared at the open door for a moment. Then, head lowered, he pushed himself out of the cage and stood up. His spine creaked, stiff from the long days of captivity.

  “All right. You win.” He rubbed the chafed skin of his wrists. “But I’m warning you. If you’re not being honest with me, I’ll—”

  “Quiet—” The Devil held up a finger as he looked behind himself, up through the walls to the farmhouse’s courtyard. “They’re returning. Eleven of them. All outside.”

  Blake tried to hear them, too, but couldn’t. “Should I run?”

  “No—” He shook his head. “If you run, they’ll come after you. It’s safer if you fight.” The Devil pointed to the M16 propped in the corner by Adeeb. “Take the boy’s rifle. I’ll make sure he doesn’t wake up.”

  Blake took the rifle and the extra ammo clip from the corner. Adeeb stirred, as though troubled by bad dreams, but his eyes didn’t open.

  “There; the rear stairs.” The Devil pointed to the opposite side of the cellar. “We’ll head outside and circle around the back of them. They won’t be expecting an attack from behind.”

  “But it’s too dark out there.” Blake kept his voice to a whisper. “I don’t have a scope. And if I can’t see them, I won’t be able to take them out.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll be with you, and that will be enough.”

  Outside, the moonless Afghan night was so dark that Blake couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He moved stealthily away from the farmhouse, then crouched down, wondering what to do next.

  “Go left.” A voice whispered at his ear, startling him. “About three yards. Then wait.”

  For a moment, he thought that the Devil had followed him out through the window, and was still beside him. He reached over with one hand, but felt nothing.

  “Go,” the disembodied voice commanded. “Now.”

  Following the voice’s directions, he found himself tucked behind a slight rise, the M16 resting on a stone outcropping.

  “They’re right in front of you.” The Devil’s voice whispered once more in his ear. “There’s a bluff on the other side of the farmhouse. Pull the rifle back so they won’t see the muzzle flash, and fire into that.”

  Blake had already figured out the Devil’s strategy. The sharp crack of the rifle shot, and the rocks dislodging from the bullet hitting the bluff, drew a flurry of surprised voices from the insurgents. And their own shots, directed at the rocks still tumbling down the side of the bluff gave Blake a bead on where the insurgents stood. Aiming just behind the bright fl
ashes from their weapons, he got off a quick couple of shots. Each hit its mark, and he heard the satisfying sound of their bodies falling lifeless to the ground.

  “Stay low.” The voice spoke at his ear again. “They’ve spotted you. Go to the right and hit the dirt.”

  Shots from the insurgents ripped up the ground where he had just been. Rolling onto his shoulder, Blake fired another couple of rounds, one passing straight through the chest of one of the men below him, the next shattering another’s skull and flinging him backward.

  “They’re scattering. Bring your aim twenty degrees to the right. Lower—”

  He peered into the darkness. “I can’t see him.”

  “Just do it. That’s it. Now, fire—”

  Another round was squeezed off, followed by the dull sound of it hitting flesh.

  One by one, Blake picked off the insurgents, heeding the voice at his ear, diving to one side or sprinting to another spot to avoid their return fire. He was pretty sure that the last one had been their leader—from a distance, he could just make out the figure lying on the ground.

  He fired off one more round, to make sure the man was dead. Then the night was silent again. Blake stood up from his hiding spot, then turned and walked back toward the farmhouse.

  “It’s okay, kid—” Only a single candle was guttering inside; by its light, he saw Adeeb crouching in the corner, staring fearfully up at the Devil standing beside Blake. “Neither of us is going to hurt you.” He slung the M16 by its strap over his shoulder. “You’re an innocent in all of this, we know that. So stay here, and we’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

  “No, Blake. That’s a mistake.” The Devil looked at Adeeb, then turned toward the soldier. “If we leave the boy here, they’ll kill him. His friends will put a bullet through his head, thinking he helped you.”

  Blake knew that the Devil was right. “Then we’ll have to take him with us.”

  “And have him slow us down?” The Devil shook his head. “No. There’s a fuel truck outside that’s fully loaded. Let him take that instead. Then, if anyone questions him about what happened here, he can say he was off delivering supplies.”

  Blake nodded. “That makes sense…” He gestured to Adeeb. “C’mon, kid. Time for you to hit the road.”

  Dawn broke over the Afghan hills. By its first pale light, Blake watched the dust cloud of the truck through a paneless window, Adeeb at the wheel and heading for the nearest town.

  “Unfortunately—” The Devil was standing behind Blake. “That was the only vehicle. Which means you’re going to have to make your own way back to your barracks on foot.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll manage it,” said Blake. “I’ve been stomping all over this goddamned terrain for months.”

  The Devil came closer. “But even so, it will be a long hike before you get to where you’re heading. And the nights out in the open are brutally cold in this part of the world. Call me selfish, but after freeing you, I’d like to make sure that you get home in one piece.” The Devil removed his overcoat and extended the garment toward him. “Here—take this. My coat will keep you warm on even the coldest night. And should you need it, its magic will help you in other ways, too.”

  “Its magic?” Blake set the M16 down. He took hold of the overcoat to examine it. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Reach inside its pockets, and you’ll see.”

  Blake did what the Devil said, and drew out a thick, fist-sized wad of paper. It was cash, a roll of large-denomination bills secured with a rubber band.

  “Try again—”

  The same pocket yielded another roll of bills, even larger than the first.

  “All the money you’ll ever need. In whatever currency you like. A suitable end, I think, to such an eventful night.”

  “Wow…” There was no way Blake could keep from being impressed. He reached into the overcoat’s pockets and pulled out even more. Wad after wad dropped into a pile at his booted feet. “As much as I like?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Whenever I need?”

  The Devil nodded and took another step forward to hurry Blake up. “All you have to do is put it on.”

  Blake ran his hand across the coat’s immaculate lapels. It looked as if it would fit him perfectly somehow, even though the Devil was slightly taller than him. The sight of the money at his feet dizzied him.

  As the Devil watched, Blake slid his arms into the overcoat’s sleeves and pulled its lapels across his chest.

  And fell to the ground, scattering the pile of money, as seething pain burned through every fiber of his body. His fingers tore at the front of the coat; it felt as if the garment were on fire, charring the flesh beneath.

  He looked down at himself and saw the overcoat darkening with his blood. The fibers of its cloth writhed like headless snakes, burrowing into his flesh with an insatiable hunger. He could feel lacerating, fiery threads digging their way toward his vital organs. His pulse pounded with dizzying force as the reddened tendrils inched through the shivering chambers of his heart, seizing it in a knotlike grip.

  An agonized cry broke from his throat. As his eyes rolled back in their sockets, he had a nightmarish glimpse of the overcoat’s animate substance rippling and tightening across his raw flesh—

  He stumbled backward, barely managing to stay upright. His nails splintered as he fought to rip open the garment. Nothing happened but his own blood welling up into his palms. The overcoat had become one with him, fused to his flayed skin. He couldn’t tear it off, no matter how desperately he clawed at it.

  Pain overwhelmed him, driving away the last conscious fragment in his skull. He could hear himself screaming, and see the Devil smiling down at him. And then nothing else but darkness …

  He woke again hours later, only to find that the nightmare had just begun.

  The pain from the coat had ebbed, enough to be barely endurable. Blake managed to get to his feet, then stumbled back out of the farmhouse. And found something even worse.

  They were still there, arrayed on the ground: the corpses from the firefight in the dark. Eleven of them, each dispatched with a shot from the same M16 he dragged behind himself now. But they weren’t the insurgents who had captured him a week ago, and who had been getting ready to transmit his execution over the Internet. He found himself looking down into the blank, lifeless eyes of his own men, all eleven members of the alpha team that he had once led.

  He felt the dismay rising in his gut as he stumbled from each splayed-out body to the next, recognizing one face after another. The entire alpha team was there, or what was left of them.

  Rescue mission …

  The realization dawned in his slow, numbed thoughts. The team must have found out where the insurgents had taken him. And had come to save him. But he hadn’t been able to see who he had really been firing at, picking them off one by one. The Devil, whispering unseen at his ear, had tricked him.

  On the ground, sloping away from the back of the farmhouse, Blake found the last of them. The alpha team’s second-in-command; they had all been his sworn companions, but this had been his best friend. The corpse’s skull had been ripped open by the M16 round that Blake had placed there, guided by the Devil.

  Weeping, Blake gathered his friend’s body up to the front of the seething overcoat he bore upon his own frame. And saw from the corner of his eye that the corpse’s hand was gripped tight upon a grenade, its pin already pulled and discarded. The grenade dropped from the dead grip and rolled down the slope to the fuel barrels that were stored there. Blake didn’t let go of his friend’s body, but held it tighter against himself, as though he could somehow shield the dead from what he knew was going to happen next.

  The fiery explosion lifted Blake from the ground, tearing the alpha team member’s corpse from him. He arced through the air, landing in the smoldering rubble of the farmhouse amidst the walls collapsed by the shock wave from the fuel barrels igniting.

  He landed so hard that
it amazed him that he was still conscious. As the smoke began to clear, he pushed himself into a sitting position, then saw that a jagged piece of shrapnel, big as his arm, had been torn from one of the fuel drums and lodged in his chest. Its knifelike point had pierced the overcoat and imbedded itself into his heart.

  I should be dead …

  He knew that, even as his trembling fingers seized the metal and yanked it out. Blood gushed from the wound as he threw the red shard away. The blood seeped between his fingers as he clutched his chest and got to his feet.

  The alpha team’s emergency med kit was in one of the corpse’s backpacks. Blake found it, tore the lid open, and pulled out the surgical needle and a pack of sutures. Hunkered on the blackened ground, he bent over himself, driving the needle through the overcoat and into the raw flesh beneath, stitching himself up as best he could.

  Dizzied from the pain and his grim labors, Blake staggered over to the farmhouse’s water trough. His reflection as he bent over the water was that of a bloodied, grimy scarecrow, his face blackened with dirt and the crusting red from his own wounds and those of his dead team members. When he reached down and splashed the water into his face, it burned like acid, fierce enough to send him reeling backward, gasping in renewed agony.

  He realized then that the coat, as full of filth and stinking blood as the rest of him, would never let him cleanse himself of what had happened, of what he had done to his comrades and friends.

  Yet there was still one more gift. One more trick that the Devil sent him. Searching about in his dead team members’ backpacks, for an MRE or anything else to get into his empty stomach, he came across the comm officer’s radio gear. He couldn’t get the shortwave transmitter working, but managed to pick up an English-language broadcast signal. He squatted down and listened, comforted by hearing another living being’s voice.