Blood & Rust

by S. A. Swiniarski

  The window shattered, the frame exploding outward, as Iago sailed out into the night—If what Stefan saw was still Iago. He had only a glimpse as it had sprung by him, but what Stefan had seen resembled a twisted bat-winged gargoyle, skin like horn, and a mouth with pointed jaws and teeth longer than its clawed fingers. It had crashed naked through the window, tearing most of it away from the wall. He heard the wreckage crash onto the ground below before he stepped up to the window.

  A chill wind blew in, rocking pieces of the window frame back and forth. Around him. Pieces of wood now pointed out into the night, while below him, broken glass glittered on the street. The only sign that Stefan saw of Iago was a shadow moving, almost too quick to see, on the roof of the apartment across the street, three floors above him.

  Stefan stepped back from the windows and saw, on the floor, the remnants of a pair of black overalls. The seams had burst open. Stefan crossed himself and prayed for his own soul.

  An elder named Abraham began the last twenty-four hours of his three hundred years of existence in the Union Terminal Station. He had traveled from Chicago in a private car, and upon his arrival there was little of the night left. This didn’t disturb him. He wasn’t hurried. After three centuries, he was never hurried.

  He walked out to the street, ignoring the humans around him, and because he wished it, the humans ignored him. None would remember seeing him pass.

  Once he passed through the foot of the Terminal Tower, and faced Public Square, he stood in the middle of the night-empty street and breathed in the air.

  Even here, far removed from everything that had happened, he could smell the corruption. Something ugly was at play here. For the first time, Abraham felt his confidence shaken. He knew that there was a slaughter going on here. The circles in Chicago knew that there were circles here being devastated, their leaders being killed and left for dead.

  For years, those outside the demesne of Cleveland saw it as an internal problem. A circle, however large, was loath to interfere with the internal problems of another circle.

  It wasn’t until those outside lost all contact with the Council in this city that they even considered sending one of their own to investigate. Even then, the debate took months, while the only contact with the community in Cleveland were confused individuals escaping the collapse of their society—some little more than thralls freed too soon by the death of their master.

  Until now, Abraham had theorized that the destruction had been wrought by a member of the Council itself, someone whose ambition for control finally outstripped his loyalty to the Covenant. The other likely suspect was someone in the society who had lost his mind. Though, when one of the blood went mad, the madness rarely persisted this long before the offender was disciplined.

  Abraham now felt that both possibilities were wrong. There was an oppressive psychic pall over the city. Something dark and powerful was in control of the city now. Abraham could almost feel it become aware of him.

  In the past century, nothing had been able to frighten him. The emotion was so old and ill-used that it took a few moments for Abraham to realize that fear was what he was feeling right now. A cold hand gripped his chest, and for a few long minutes he stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating.

  He had an impulse to walk back into the Union Terminal, reboard his velvet-curtained train car, and leave this place. For moments he considered accepting the disgrace of abandoning his job here, rather than stepping forward and confronting what had taken this city.

  Abraham only considered it, and the fear was only fleeting. He was, after all, one of the oldest and most powerful beings in this country. He walked off into the night, to find the remnants left by those of the blood, and of the creature that had slain them.

  Abraham stepped into their meeting place, a long table before a set of tall windows. From here he could see into the seething industrial valley of the city. He stepped up to the table and placed a hand upon it. It disturbed a layer of dust.

  Twelve chairs were behind the table, five were overturned.

  Abraham looked at the chairs and spoke quietly to himself, “Laila, Anacreon, Raphael, Byron ...” Abraham looked at the last chair, lying on its back on the floor. “Who?” he asked.

  The being responsible had been in this room. Abraham could feel the presence. It had sunk into the walls like an evil smell, a spiritual rot. He could almost see the man walking into this private chamber, and methodically tipping over the chairs of his victims.

  Like disposing of the bodies in public, it showed an almost incomprehensible arrogance.

  The air changed. It became heavy, weighted with the darkness around him. He could smell, sense, one of the blood enter the room. Abraham should have noticed another’s presence long before it was this close. As he turned to face the visitor, he had a disturbing thought—he was only perceiving the other because the other permitted it.

  The darkness seemed to deepen near the doorway where the visitor stood, but Abraham could still see him clearly. His most notable feature was blond hair too long for this age. The spirit behind his eyes flared brighter than any Abraham had ever seen before. Behind most eyes Abraham saw a candle he could make dance or dim at his whim. Abraham knew that he could no more influence what was behind these eyes than an eyedropper could influence a bonfire.

  The visitor leaned forward on a cane, and looked Abraham up and down. There was a half-smile on his face, as if he saw something amusing. “Are you looking for something here, my friend?”

  Abraham didn’t lie. His purpose was evident. “There’s been a violation of the Covenant here. The local elders have failed to deal with it—”

  The other laughed. When he did, whatever heat and light were left in the room seemed to drain away. “The elders are gone.”

  “Four, yes—”

  “All.” The visitor walked forward. His presence seemed to radiate cold, sucking the heat off of Abraham’s skin. “All of them have left, one way or another.”

  Abraham couldn’t look away from his eyes; the power there, the age, the infinitely cold arrogance wouldn’t allow him to. “It is you,” Abraham said. This was the creature he had been sent here to stop.

  Abraham moved in a flash. Before he had even allowed his conscious mind to think, talons had extended from his hands and he was bringing them down on the visitor. Both hands aimed overhand, across the chest, toward the heart. Removal of that organ would be as fatal as decapitation.

  Abraham’s victim didn’t move as his talons came down, slicing into the chest cavity. He tore through clothes, flesh, and bone too easily. It was almost as if the flesh gave way before he reached it. Then his hands jerked with an impact that almost dislocated his shoulders.

  The cane clattered to the ground.

  The visitor held each of Abraham’s wrists. Abraham’s hands were buried deep into holes in the visitor’s chest, just below the pectorals. The visitor’s suit was shredded, and Abraham’s arms were spattered with tarlike blood up to his elbows. Light glinted off of the torn flesh, as if it were moving.

  The visitor showed little sign of pain, or even discomfort. That was when the fear came back. Abraham could feel the lungs shredded beneath his hands. Such an injury would have taken Abraham to the ground at the very least. This thing before him barely noticed.

  Abraham tried to remove his hands, but the visitor was stronger. Much stronger. He was held fast.

  The laugh was worse this time, worse because he felt it in his hands more than heard it. It was nearly silent, and it was accompanied by blood dripping from the visitor’s lips.

  “This is your Covenant?” The voice was below a whisper, its breath sucked in through the holes in his chest. “Strike down any with the will, the power, to take what is due him? Hobble our race? Keep us silent and cowering in the shadows? That is your creed?”

  Abraham tried to pull his hands away. His muscles tore from bone and reknit themselves into more efficient patterns, but it was no use. And while he
struggled, the flesh around the wounds began pulling together, the gore flowing into itself, fusing under new skin.

  “So terrified of death, of discovery, that a handful of bodies can paralyze you. The fact I am here is proof enough that I am necessary.”

  Abraham struggled as the stranger’s flesh wrapped itself around his hands. As he struggled, the tarlike blood that coated his arms began to flow upwards. He could feel it under his jacket advancing along his upper arms, toward his neck. Feeling that, the fear turned into panic.

  The blood was everything to his kind. Mind, soul, and flesh were all one with the blood. In all of them the flesh shifted with the will, but it was near the apotheosis of power for the blood to act as an extension of the body, moving to its own will. Abraham had never seen it, and had never met anyone who had. It was something a millennial ancient might aspire to.

  The blood tightened around his arms like a serpent. He felt his own skin tear and give way as the burning tendrils sank into his own flesh. When the blood seared down to the bone, he felt the flesh binding him give way. He was thrown backward, slamming up against the unused meeting table.

  He slid to the ground, unable to move. A burning alien presence slid beneath the skin, traveling from his arms, to his neck, his head. While Abraham felt the presence burn into his mind, he felt something else. The blood carried a name, an old name.

  “Melchior,” he whispered, a last conscious act of his own will.

  Melchior stepped forward, the tatters of his suit blood-stained and hanging over a naked, unblemished chest. “I can read you now,” he said, standing over him. “I read you, Abraham, as easily as you could once read a witless thrall. I smelled your presence the moment you entered my demesne.” He knelt down next to Abraham and cupped his chin. “It is mine now, no one left here to challenge my authority. I already own countless human puppets, and thralls beyond your own petty imagining. I see through all their eyes, as I see through yours now.”

  He stood up, pulling Abraham upright by the chin. Abraham’s legs followed through with the motion against his will. He felt the complete domination of Melchior. He couldn’t act now except as Melchior willed.

  Abraham kept thinking, over and over, that Melchior had died centuries ago.

  “You came to see,” Melchior said. “See you shall. I shall take you to Lucian; you will bear witness to my kingdom.” He passed his hand over Abraham’s eyes and the world became a black void.

  When Abraham was called awake, he had recovered some of his will. Enough to move, to turn his head, to think. All of it was too late to do him any good. Melchior had overwhelmed him for long enough to bring him into the heart of his new kingdom. Long enough for him to be chained.

  The room was long and dimly lit. He was at one end, and a mass of pale faces filled the other end, spreading back into the darkness. Melchior stood between him and the crowd of spectators. The watchers were of many races, and wore the battered clothing of the unemployed, the drifters, the homeless. Their faces were worn and dirty, and all wore the same expression. They all looked upon Melchior with a beatific expression of faith.

  Melchior held a golden cup in front of him, and gave it to the crowd. When he handed the cup to someone, he would say, “Drink of my blood,” and they would drink. It was a dark mass, and it disgusted and horrified Abraham at the same time. The bond between master and thrall was personal, sacred. To spread one’s own blood so widely was something close to pure evil. Melchior’s kingdom was a megalomaniac’s attempt to control as many beings as possible.

  Abraham saw the cup pass from mouth to mouth, and he saw in those eyes a worship. These dregs saw Melchior as a god. Trash that no one of the blood would lower themselves to call their own, these Melchior took.

  It sickened Abraham.

  As the ceremony continued, he tried to free himself. He struggled, but while he normally would have the strength to part his chains, his confrontation with Melchior had drained him too deeply. Melchior’s blood, the blood that bound the slaves in front of him, had burned too long within him. Abraham’s body and spirit had exhausted itself just to fight free from those internal chains.

  If only he could feed, himself, regain his strength.

  After what seemed an eternity of struggle, Melchior turned with the cup in his hand.

  “Welcome to my kingdom, Abraham,” Melchior said. “These, and countless others like them, they call me Lord.” Abraham strained against his chains and Melchior smiled at his struggles. “You’re the pinnacle of what our race has become. Weak. Without even the strengths of your dubious Covenant.” Melchior held up the golden chalice, the inside stained with red. It glittered in the candlelight, the odor powerful, seductive. The liquid pulled at him, tearing at the emptiness inside him.

  “You want to take it,” Melchior said. “Take it, partake in my Covenant.” Abraham’s soul was at such a low ebb, the weakness and the hunger so strong, that he wanted to take it. Abraham was close to pledging fealty to this dark lord if it meant to end to the burning void inside him.

  Then disgust overwhelmed Abraham. He was of free blood. He took his own blood, untainted by any others of his kind. What had flowed through Melchior’s veins wasn’t blood, it was liquid slavery. If he partook willingly, he would become Melchior’s, little more than the rabble worshiping him.

  From somewhere, he found the strength to say, “Go to hell.”

  Melchior frowned and upturned the cup next to him. Blackish liquid spilled on the straw-covered floor. He dropped the cup and took a step toward Abraham. As he moved forward, his followers surged forward to fall on their knees before the spilled blood.

  “This is hell,” Melchior said, “and I am its lord and master.”

  Melchior walked close enough that Abraham felt his breath on his cheek. It was cold against his skin.

  “Poor choice, my friend.” Abraham heard the scrape of metal. “You will become part of my body one way or another.” Abraham saw the shine of a blade in Melchior’s hand. “If my blood does not flow in your veins, your blood shall flow in mine.”

  The last thing Abraham saw was the circle of Melchior’s thralls sucking his blood off of the floor.

  Then the world went dark for good.

  7

  Friday, September 11-Monday, September 14

  “Something has to be done about these bodies that keep showing up,” Mayor Burton said. Sweat sheened on his face as he looked across the court at Ness. They stood in a handball court at the Cleveland Athletic Club. Ness was holding his own against the older man. His matches with the mayor almost inevitably turned toward business. Ness suspected half the time it was to throw off his game.

  “I wanted a crime-fighting administration,” Burton gave the ball a savage return. “This is making it look bad.”

  Ness scrambled for the return and said, “Which bodies?” Ness suspected “which bodies;” he read the same papers that Mayor Burton did. What had been a deep, almost subliminal, unease about the decapitated corpses turning up in the Run and elsewhere seemed to have erupted into full-fledged panic. The papers were beginning to scream now.

  This was the first time that the mayor had brought up the subject.

  Burton made it to the ball, and in a breathless voice told him, “The Kingsbury Run murders, Ness.”

  Ness let the ball pass by him and turned to face Mayor Burton. “I have investigations ongoing—”

  “I’m sure you do.” Burton nodded and wiped sweat from his forehead. “That’s not the point. I’m sure you’re doing your job. You’ve done good work cleaning the graft from the police department, and in everything else from organized crime to traffic safety.”

  “But?”

  Burton turned and looked at him, “But people are raving that there’s a maniac loose in the city and the police aren’t doing anything to catch him.”

  Ness nodded. “Making public any suspects might sabotage the investigation.”

  “I need something public, Ness. Your greatest stren
gth is making yourself look good in the press. I need you to do that. I need public demonstration of the department’s will in this matter.” Burton walked over to a bench, grabbed a towel, and flung it over his shoulders. “I want the public to know we’re after this guy. I want every spare man on it. You understand me?”

  “Yes, sir, I think I do.”

  The meeting was on a Monday. A month and a half after being taken off his secret investigation of Dietrich, he was called in with a lot of other cops into a briefing on what was being called the “Torso Murders.” He was there, with the other detectives, under orders to behave as if everything was new to him.

  He noticed some press on the way to the meeting, and he couldn’t help thinking of it as some sort of publicity stunt. Stefan didn’t know if he really wanted to be here, so he took a seat way in back of the room, far away from the blackboard, the tacked-up pictures, and the coroner.

  Ness was here, as well as Emil Musil and Orly May, the detectives in charge of the public investigation. Nuri wasn’t, but Stefan didn’t think too much about that. Their partnership had ended when he was removed from the Dietrich assignment, and he hadn’t seen much of his former partner since.

  The room was cramped as more of the Homicide squad filed in. Eventually no seats were left and people began lining up in back. By then the room was filled with thirty or forty people. The air was stale and thick with cigarette smoke, and the crowd added a claustrophobic pressure to the room.

  Ness spoke first. “We all want this madman caught. Every new body is cause for growing panic. We’re here to go over what we have, to try and get a picture of the man, something concrete we can give to the press.”

  That confirmed Stefan’s opinion that this was all a grand-stand play for the reporters. As Ness kept talking, Stefan scanned the room, reporters and policemen, sweating in the stifling heat of this enclosed room. No windows, or even a fan.