Blood Samples

by Bonansinga, Jay

  Poe gasped as the dog landed on his legs. It felt as though an anvil had been dropped on his lap, the sound of a ferocious howl piercing Poe's eardrums. The beast lunged at Poe's neck, as Poe cried out one last exultation of fright, instinctively putting up his hands.

  The words that came out of Poe in those final moments before the inevitable mauling — Poe would not realize what they were until later — were barely audible, delivered in a strangled whisper of surrender and absolute sorrow. "... Virginia my love I'm coming... ."

  Almost on cue with this whispered non sequitur, another command bellowed out of the Indian — "Keeeewahhh!" — and the mongrel dog suddenly jerked to a stop, its dripping, razor fangs only inches away from Poe's jugular. Moonlight shone in the creature's eyes the color of agate.

  Poe blinked.

  Nothing happened.

  For a single, extraordinary moment, in the darkness of that clearing, this strange and abrupt tableau continued, as though the animal were a retriever on the hunt, a pointer ready to rip open Poe's neck at the slightest command. But no command came. No sound. No movement whatsoever. Poe tried to see over the top of the beast's conical head, tried to spy the Indian's blank face back there in the shadows, tried to make out an expression. It was difficult to see the wolf-handler, but after another horrible moment the young man's brown face began to come into focus as Poe's eyes adjusted.

  The Indian was gazing down at the poet with the strangest expression — head cocked with bewilderment, scarred face furrowed with recognition — heralding the advent of something very unexpected.

  Something in Poe's own visage had touched off this strange moment of hesitation. Sadness, hopelessness, melancholia, perhaps even madness... it was impossible to tell. But for one inexplicable moment, an inchoate connection arced out across the distance between the two pathetic souls, and hung there in the darkness as thick as fog...

  ... until the spell was broken by an enormous blast cracking open the night: the .67 calibre shell from Pinkerton's Maynard echoing out across the ravine.

  The mysterious Indian — along with his canine charge — whirled suddenly, then vanished into the adjacent woods like specters.

  It happened so quickly that it nearly took Poe's breath away, the release of weight on his midsection a blessed and startling relief.

  The pack of wolves — playing the role of a mad Greek chorus — swirled and darted away into the shadows as well.

  "MR. POE!"

  The stocky Scotsman came trundling down the slimy trail with his pistol raised and ready. Pinkerton's eyes were burning with alarm. "Are ye there?!"

  "Here Mr. Pinkerton!" Poe called out and collapsed into the weeds.

  The last image the poet saw before fainting dead away was the night sky, riotous with stars, making Poe wonder, just for an instant, if his beloved Virginia was up there.

  Then all went black.

  Black and silent as a tomb.

  EPILOGUE

  "RETAINMENT"

  11 MARCH, 1848

  The next day, after a much needed convalescence in the back room of Allan and Joan Pinkerton's residence on Washington Street, the poet Edgar Allan Poe got dressed, gathered his things and prepared to depart. The cavalry would soon be after the Indian, combing the woods south of the Kankakee River. Progress razed good and evil alike.

  Before his departure, Poe had agreed to meet briefly with Deputy Allan Pinkerton in a small establishment a block and a half west of the Pinkerton home. The place, John Buckley's Saloon, was empty that day when the poet and the law man huddled at a table in the rear.

  They shared a bottle of Muscatel. Pinkerton actually took a few sips despite the fact that he was a teetotaler. Poe had no problem drinking for the both of them. They relived their adventure in the outskirts, and discussed the meaning of it all. They mused on the identity of the killer, the origins of his beastly conduct and ways that he might be tracked.

  Finally Pinkerton broached the real subject of this final exchange with the poet. "I won't lie to ye, Sir," Pinkerton said finally, cupping his hands around his mug, "I need yer perspective on things."

  Poe seemed flattered. "Of course, Sir, I would be more than happy to review future case files you might send my way."

  Pinkerton shook his head. "That ain't exactly what I mean, Sir. What I mean to say is, I need ye on a more regular basis, if you follow my meaning."

  Poe eyed him. "I'm not quite sure I do follow."

  "Mr. Poe, I'd like you to join me as a... well... as a consultant I suppose you'd call it."

  "Dear Lord you're serious."

  Pinkerton shrugged. "The county don't have a lot of extra swag to go around, but I could pay ye outta my own pocket for a good long while."

  Poe looked away, thought about it for a moment. Pinkerton waited patiently. A man needs time to make a decision now and then. Poe finally looked at him. "I have commitments, speaking engagements, book tours, and material due at various publishing firms."

  Pinkerton waved his grimy hand. "Yer free to come and go as you please, whenever the need arises, free to compose, free to be Edgar Allan Poe. In other words, this arrangement would be just between yourself and me."

  Another long, ponderous moment passed in which Poe seemed to be facing something deeply buried within himself as he studied the water rings on the burnished table top. Finally he took one last, long sip of wine. In fact, he downed the entire remaining contents of his goblet. "God help me," he said with an exasperated sigh. "I'll do it."

  The two men shook hands, and the era of the detective was born.

  FINIS

  THE MINIATURIST

  1.

  Dusk

  To bewitch an enemy: hang up a black toad by the heels and collect the venom in an oyster shell, then use it to impregnate a victim's linen.

  In the metal flake pink light the Disciple had no idea he was about to cross over.

  The air was noxious-sweet like a match head that had just been struck, and the sulfalux lamps were seething with soot-clouds of bugs. The Disciple had blinders around his visor, obscuring the periphery. He was stumbling along the oxidized curb, trying to keep a narrow bandwidth in his head, trying not to panic, trying not to feedback on the juju casting after him. Night was closing in like a vice, and vehicular traffic had dwindled to nothing, and now it was only the Disciple and the wasted archipelago of hollow-toothed buildings lining the outskirts of the city.

  He turned south, following the glitter-paint directionals snaking along the macadam.

  Ferris sulfate, minister's bone, magnesium, and wolfsbane have a distinctive texture when mixed and striped along a stretch of composite pavement. When first applied the formula looks like spangled enamel, like a festive toenail polish. But over the years it develops a patina like the old, faded reflective tape that construction crews used to lay down on center-lines back in the Twentieth Century.

  The Disciple was desperately clinging to this aging barrier, the rhythmic tattoo of his boots crunching in the cinders, blending with the thumping of his heart. He was scared, and this time it wasn't merely neurotic doubt. This time, he was marrow-deep scared. Edge-of-the-abyss scared. He had bet his spiritual money on the wrong pony, and now he was panicking, trying to flee the scene.

  But how does a person flee a dogma? The same way one flees a dog?

  Hobbling along, mind racing, the Disciple kept his cold, palsied hands in his charmsuit pockets, fondling his stringer of AmuLEDs — a dozen antique Saint Christopher medallions, treated and luminized, all gifted through the appropriate channels. He was scanning the edges of the distance for the Wiccan Tunnel, or the Piper Interchange, or the White Municipal Canal, or any conceivable way out of this dark, doomed city. But all he could read were the black cathedrals of rusted high-rises, the intersecting shadows leading to darker chasms ahead.

  He sensed a change, which made him falter momentarily, breaking stride.

  Perhaps it was the subtle difference in the sound of his footsteps, or th
e drop in temperature, or the air going clammy all of a sudden like the air in a root cellar. Or perhaps it was the faint neural buzz that feathered over him, as though the tip of an icicle had touched his spine. But whatever the cause, he lumbered to a stop right there on the road and stood there for a long, agonizing moment, gazing through his visor at the all-encompassing darkness. Day-Glo green veins flickered in his field-view, signifying an atmosphere charged with static ozone. Against his better judgment, he took off his blinders, removed his visor and took a look around the street.

  He was standing on the edge of a vacant lot bordered by dead, antique skyscrapers — empty tenements with blackened windows — and the air was singing with tension. To his left a broken sulfa-lamp threw a pool of jaundiced light across the rubble. To his right, the bald, petrified ground stretched into blackness. His feeble heart started thumping harder. Had he taken a wrong turn? Something was very wrong. He squeezed the AmuLEDs, and he glanced down at his feet.

  Panic stabbed his sunken chest.

  The barriers were gone. Gone! He had made a fatal mistake. He had inadvertently wandered into an uncharmed zone, and now he was exposed, naked, a sitting duck. Spinning around in a quick three-sixty, nearly losing his balance, he fumbled with his visor, slipping it back on, lifting his charmsuit collar. He could hear a faint buzzing noise, and he saw the speckled pin-points of fireflies out of the corner of his eyes, closing in on him from all directions.

  He turned and ran.

  Unfortunately he wasn't as strong as he used to be — at sixty-three, with seventy-five percent artificial joints, he wasn't exactly a world class sprinter — and now his side was stitching unmercifully with sharp pain as he careened across the hard-pack. The fear was dragging at him, and his skinny legs were already trashed from the six kilo trek across the city. And besides, it was futile. Where was he going to hide? Charging toward the nearest edifice, gasping for breath, clutching the stringer of charms, he could hear the buzz of black magic tightening around him.

  He reached the threshold of a gaping doorway when the first shockwave reached him.

  It was like being struck in the back of the neck by a snow ball, the impact cracking his teeth as he tripped on the threshold. He went down hard, biting his tongue and tasting grime and copper. His muscles seized up suddenly. His visor was cracked down the center by the fall, the infra sparking and fizzing as he tried to twist around and face the onslaught. The fireflies were above him, hovering in the doorway, coalescing into a swirling constellation.

  The Disciple had no opportunity to flip on his neuralizer, or reach for his charms, or even pray. He only had time to let out a primal cry as the constellation above him metamorphosed into a horse— an enormous, graceful, excruciatingly beautiful, translucent horse— rearing up in the air above him. And on this starry horse's back rode a faceless medieval knight with his broadsword poised for attack. And the Disciple's primal scream proved to be his final mistake because it necessitated the yawning of his mouth.

  The glittering broadsword plunged down into his throat and transformed one last time.

  The scientists have a name for it: Spontaneous hypertrophic neurological combustion (SHNC). On the street they call it "shanking" or "flaming out" or "popping twenty," and very few have witnessed it. The Disciple was oblivious to the final stages of the phenomenon due to the abrupt cataclysm of pain erupting inside him. Most of his bodily functions had already failed, and most of his consciousness had already winked out by the time the final phase began. He never felt the rending, or the flames blossoming from every orifice, or the internal heat bursting the seams of his abdomen like a pressure cooker exploding.

  He collapsed then.

  And his corpse raged with magenta flames for nearly an hour before subsiding into a smoldering pyre.

  And no one tracked it. No one reported it. No one even saw it. Around these parts, people keep to themselves. They have better things to do than monitor uncharmed zones for incidents such as these.

  In fact, no one even made note of the charred body until dawn the next morning, when a small dispatch of city cops appeared in the grey haze along the horizon.

  They came in three vehicles: A cruiser, a meat wagon, and an unmarked sedan — all masked with opaque lead shields — hugging the charm lines. They drew to a stop at the corner of a Hundred and Eleventh and Avenue X, and they sat there for a moment, taking samples of the air. When they were satisfied the ion count was back to normal, they emerged from their vehicles and trudged across the uncharmed lot.

  There were five cops, four of them dressed in dark grey, city-issue charmsuits, their methodical boot-steps crunching in the cinders. Two of them were young men with civil tattoos on their shaved heads, carrying ambu-gear and a folding gurney. Another two were older, more seasoned men wearing police flak vests over their charmsuits. The fifth was a middle aged woman with an antique fedora on her head and a pair of tiny round opaque-visors over her eyes. She wore a slightly different style of charmsuit — an alloy duster — and the outline of her elemental bulged off her hip.

  "Looks like a shanker," Cop Number One commented as the group approached the corpse.

  "Let's go easy on the physical," Ambu-Driver Number One pleaded, unfolding the gurney.

  "Yeah," Ambu-Driver Number Two agreed. "Last time you cowboys got your hands on one of these, you turned it to dust before we got a chance to sweep."

  "Shut up," the woman in the hat said softly, kneeling down by the Disciple's body, her long-coat blooming around her. Her hands were rock-steady.

  "Is this gonna take long?" Cop Number Two asked, glancing over his shoulder at the dull shimmer of the charm-lines a quarter klick away.

  "Please," the woman muttered, making careful observations of the position of the body.

  Was it ritual? Was it BlackStuff? Was it something the woman hadn't seen before? She pulled a cruci-probe from her vest-pocket— an antique crucifix, blessed and retrofitted with a jeweler's pick— and carefully prodded the scorched flesh that had pulled back from the Disciple's yellow, uneven teeth. Who was this guy? Was he civvie? Was he cult?

  The woman let out a sigh and glanced around the threshold for evidence. Behind her opaques, in the crook of shadows slanting off her fedora, she was striking. Piercing green eyes, and a lioness's mane of iron grey framing an angular face that had only gotten more sculpted and creased with age. It was a face with years of loneliness etched upon it.

  Her real name was Eva Strange, although most people knew her by her obligatory city registration number: 0004511477. 'Sevens' to her friends. Of which she had very few. Eva Strange was a special detective for a newly formed adjunct to the police force — the White Patrol — and she had little time for friendship. Especially with her expanded duties.

  "Goddamn clear-pits smell like monkey cages," Cop Number Two was mumbling.

  "Would you gentlemen mind giving me a little room here?" Eva murmured, glancing across the corpse. Something had caught her eye in the ashes under the body. It was glimmering dully, a tiny coin or medallion lodged in the debris. She carefully extended the cruciprobe and picked at it, rooting it out of the ash. It fell apart as she lifted it.

  The stringer of AmuLEDs was partially melted, fused together, but a few of the medallions were still intact. Eva dangled the charms in the dim sulfa-light and took a closer look at one of the medals. Around its tarnished edge were the words PROTECT US, still barely visible. On its back face plate were the letters VIN D P UL.

  Eva put the stringer in a numbered, blessedpouch and slipped it into her vest.

  Something else caught her attention. It lay in the ash a few feet beyond the Disciple's left hand, a small piece of bone or milk glass. She prodded it with the cruci-probe. It was a figurine, a tiny miniature effigy often used in black ceremonies, most likely carved out of gallows bark and baby tallow, still oily with blood. Probably menstrual blood. It looked female. In the old days the uninitiated might have called it a voodoo doll. Eva carefully picked it up w
ith the probe, letting it dangle from a hank of its hair.

  A faint breath of chills breathed up Eva's back. Carved out of hangman's wood, the doll was a middle-aged woman, her features meticulously rendered with jewelers tools and scientific instruments. The doll had human hair, just the perfect shade of desert sunrise red, and a tiny alloy duster fashioned out of quilted wasp wings: A spectacular rendering of Eva Strange herself.

  "Of course," she uttered under her breath.

  "What was that?" asked Cop Number Two.

  "Nothing," Eva said, shoving the fear back down her throat, standing up. She put the doll in her blessed pouch and slipped it back in her coat, then she nodded at the corpse. "Go ahead and process him, and send me all the digitals."

  Then she walked away, the cold, carved lump of hangman's gallows like a tumor in her pocket.

  2.

  The Color Behind the Dark

  To kill or harm an enemy: Bury bottles or vials of chloral hydrate, phosphorous, and snakeroot along a path where the victim will walk. Say a black mass for the dead in his or her name in a churchyard facing magnetic north the night before he or she walks the intended path.

  The Spiritual Registry Division is in the basement of the east wing of the Central Municipal Building, at the end of a narrow corridor where the liquid-tungsten lights blanch the color out of everything.

  By 10:00 AM Eva Strange was striding down this hallway with a purpose, her jaw set, the overheads flickering arrhythmically in her eyes. She was a bird-dog on the scent now, a whole set of contradictions orbiting the discovery of the body in the uncharmed zone earlier that day.

  The digitals had confirmed the stiff was Cult, probably terrorist, most likely Saman. From his internals, Eva determined his rank and number in the BlackWorld, and a lot of things didn't add up. He was a high-ranking disciple, and he was slotted for promotion to High Council. So what made him bail? Who were his enemies? And what was his connection to Eva? Had he fashioned the doll? Or had someone else? And why Eva? What was the connection?