Blood & Rust

by S. A. Swiniarski

  Even so, as the coroner and the county pathologist got up and began reviewing each individual murder, Stefan felt cold wash over his body. They explained the deaths by decapitation, the emasculation of three of the bodies, the locations they were found.

  Every single one of the deaths had been by decapitation. Some were dismembered, some not, but that was the singular fact of all the murders.

  As other detectives added details of their own investigation, Stefan remained silent. Every one of them told of leads that went nowhere, crank calls, and bogus confessions, but none of them came close to the land where Stefan had trod.

  They all talked of homosexual madmen, sexual perversion, insanity, even Jack the Ripper. None came close to discussing Eric Dietrich; none, it seemed, had come near the man Ness had set him to investigate. Ness himself didn’t add Dietrich’s name to the mix. It was as if his whole investigation had meant nothing, had never happened.

  They were all looking for a human madman. Even Ness, who had heard everything that Stefan had seen. Even when they mentioned the lack of blood in and around most of the corpses, they didn’t see. Maybe they couldn’t see.

  They were looking for something darker than a sexual pervert.

  One of the doctors present was talking about the hypothetical profile of their murderer, “He commits the murders in a private place. He has to be middle class or above—have his own house or a large apartment where he can dismember the bodies and clean them off.”

  “That,” someone said, “or access to someplace private professionally. A warehouse, a storeroom ...”

  A train, Stefan thought.

  He was here just as a member of the Homicide unit. But as the talk went on around him, he was back on the case again, and thinking of Dietrich’s business dealings with Van Sweringen, and all those pictures of Dietrich at the Union Terminal Downtown.

  8

  Wednesday, September 16

  Nuri Lapidos stood at the edge of a fetid swamp and watched the Pennsylvania authorities drag bodies from it. One of the New Castle cops was explaining to one of the Cleveland detectives that this swamp was a dumping spot for crime gangs, that there’d been half a dozen bodies found here over the years.

  The latest one lay next to the shore waiting for the coroner’s van. It was dark with slime, swollen by decomposition, and emitted a smell that was beyond Nuri’s experience. The black midges that seemed to coat the surface of the swamp also coated the body like a second skin.

  Nuri held a handkerchief over his face and tried to be unobtrusive. His, now solo, investigation of Dietrich was still secret, even if the murder investigation was becoming more high profile. This was the first time that any of the detectives tried to connect the murders in Cleveland with anything out of state.

  There was one obvious connection. The corpse was missing a head.

  How many more bodies have we missed because they weren’t dropped somewhere obvious?

  The question disturbed him. The corpse that washed up on Euclid Beach, how many others might be still in Lake Erie? How many more might be in this swamp?

  The search for other bodies dragged on into the night. Nuri left the scene after it became too dark to see anything. He had seen enough, anyway. He had added the new bodies to the “torso killer’s” tally. The body was far enough gone that Nuri doubted that it would be identified. Anonymous, like five others.

  He waited by the one Cleveland police car and lit a cigarette, waiting for the other detectives. He took long drags on his smoke, trying to empty his lungs of the smell the corpse had left there.

  Somehow it felt ominous that there were bodies this far afield. It gave the impression that the high-profile investigation only covered a small element of what was going on here.

  Nuri watched the flashlights shining through the woods between him and the swamp. The beams were fragmented, seeming more to cast shadow than illuminate anything. The dark seemed to sink into Nuri, down to the bone.

  “Nuri Lapidos,” a voice called from the darkness.

  The voice startled him. He dropped his cigarette; it tumbled off his clothing, throwing embers into the night. He turned to face the speaker, who stood on the other side of the dirt road, away from the police lights. “Who’s there?” Nuri asked quietly, his hand drifting toward his holster.

  The man stepped out of the darkness. He was dressed anonymously, his overalls and porkpie hat matching thousands of unemployed workmen who drifted from city to city. His face was different, pale skin, black goatee, and riveting eyes—all were more extraordinary.

  “Good evening, Detective,” he said.

  “Who are you?” Nuri asked. “How do you know me?”

  “I’ve seen who you are. You watch a creature calling himself Dietrich. You play your detective’s games as if he were a mortal open to human forms of prosecution.”

  Nuri stepped back. His hand was on his gun now. “Who are you, one of Dietrich’s men?”

  The man laughed. “You fight an arrogance which sees you as less than a threat. Human authority can never touch him within your law.” The man looked into Nuri’s eyes, and he felt something deep within those eyes pressing down on him, preventing him from moving. He tried to draw his gun, but his hand refused to move. He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t move.

  The man stepped up to him, close enough that the weight of his presence was like a pressure in Nuri’s chest. “Say nothing,” he said to Nuri. “An army of police, playing your police games, would not bring down the thing called Melchior. Melchior must be destroyed.”

  “Wh—” Nuri barely managed to choke out a word before the man reached out and grabbed his throat. It was barely a touch, but it crushed the breath from his voice.

  “I said, do not speak.” The man’s voice lowered to a whisper. “I want only one thing from you. You will convince Detective Stefan Ryzard to meet with me.”

  Nuri tried to say something, but all he managed was a strangled breath.

  “You will tell him to meet with Iago when he calls. Every passing day, Melchior increases his temporal power. His tendrils already reach to the farthest points of this country and beyond. Eric Dietrich must be destroyed before he becomes unassailable.”

  Iago lowered his hand from Nuri’s throat. Nuri bent over, gasping for breath.

  “You will tell your partner this, and he will meet me.”

  Nuri raised his head and drew his gun.

  It was too late. Iago had retreated into the darkness from which he had emerged.

  “He could have killed me!” Nuri yelled at Stefan. He stood in the center of Stefan’s spartan living room, turning, staring through the papers that were still tacked up on the walls. Stefan stood by the entrance to the kitchen, two cups of coffee cooling in his hands.

  “Calm down, Nuri.” Stefan tried to sound reassuring, but even in his own ears he sounded condescending.

  “Calm down?” Nuri stepped up to a wall and tore a page off of it. “What is this?” He tore off another sheet and waved the crumpled pages in front of him. “What the fuck is this? You’re off this case.”

  Stefan nodded. He was. He kept telling himself that. But he had no ready explanation why these pages still collected on his walls—some of them added as recently as this morning.

  “Why does he want you? Of anyone, why you—and why go through me to get you?” Nuri stared at him as if Stefan was the one threatening him.

  Stefan walked over to the lone table and pushed a pile of papers out of the way with the cups as he set them down. A few years of recently-acquired train schedules slid to the ground to scatter over the bare wood floor. Stefan didn’t move to pick them up.

  “Sit down,” Stefan said.

  Nuri dropped the documents he’d torn from the wall and walked up to the table. He leaned on it and stared into Stefan’s eyes. “What’s going on? Why you?”

  “Maybe I’m the only one who believes.”

  “More vampire crap? With what I’ve seen, I almost believe
it myself—at least we have some nut group that really makes an effort—”

  Stefan shook his head. “No, Nuri. I am talking true evil, supernatural, blood-drinking demons walking upon the earth.”

  There was a long silence before Nuri said, “No, I don’t buy spirits, seances, mediums, or supernatural beings. If there are such things, there’s reason behind it, a disease or some sort of infection—”

  Stefan’s voice became grave. “Sit down.”

  This time Nuri did as he asked.

  “Iago came here before he confronted you.” Nuri looked surprised, but he stayed quiet. “He is one of these dark things. He cringed before the crucifix, and when I called on the Lord, he became a bat-winged demon and escaped.”

  Nuri stared at him, his expression told Stefan that his former partner thought he had cracked.

  Stefan waved toward the bedroom door. “The window hasn’t been fixed yet. You can see the wood covering the hole. And I still have the overalls that tore away when he changed.”

  The silence stretched a long time before Nuri reached for the coffee. He looked at the cup as if he wished it was something stronger. “I wish I had more trouble believing you. But I’ve seen bodies that soaked up bullets and kept moving.” He drained the cup. After a while he said, “All we need is Boris Karloff.”

  “Bela Lugosi,” Stefan said.

  “What?”

  “Lugosi. Karloff played Frankenstein’s Monster.”

  “Oh.” He kept sipping his coffee. “I suppose you’ve gotten holy water and all that other good Catholic stuff.”

  Stefan nodded.

  “I want to know what a Jew is supposed to do with a vampire.”

  Neither of them laughed.

  9

  Friday, October 2

  It was a couple of weeks before Iago made himself known. This time he called and specified a meeting place. Stefan agreed, and took Nuri with him. The place was on Short Vincent, in one of the smaller nightclubs vying for space in the narrow alley. The crowd was thick with Friday night partygoers. The area was noisy and garishly lit.

  To Stefan the whole area seemed a manic attempt to frighten away the evil spirits of the night. Not far beyond a caveman chanting around a feeble campfire. The club they were meeting in was hidden between two other, more impressive, facades. The entrance was little more than a narrow doorway. It would have been easily missed if they hadn’t known where they were going.

  Stefan led Nuri inside, and immediately the character of the night changed. Outside, the bars of Short Vincent tried to push away the night. Here, inside, the club seemed to embrace the darkness. The lighting was dim enough that Stefan had to wait for his eyes to adjust before he could distinguish anything about his surroundings.

  The windowless main room was several steps down into the ground. The decor was a decadent combination of brass and red velvet. Stefan noticed that the place had no windows, and no mirrors. As they stepped into the room, Stefan noticed a few faces among the patrons turn to look at them. The stares continued until a rail-thin waiter came to them and said, “Gentlemen, you are expected.”

  He extended an overlong arm toward the rear of the room, and began to lead them into the depths of the club. Stefan and Nuri followed through the unusually quiet crowd. Near the back stood a line of velvet curtains hiding individual private booths. Their guide led them to one and drew aside the curtain.

  Iago sat on one side of the table. Stefan slid in on the other, followed by Nuri. The curtain slid shut, leaving them alone with the demon. Stefan felt in his pocket where he kept a rosary and a vial of holy water.

  Iago’s long hands cupped a glass in front of him. Stefan couldn’t see what he was drinking, and he didn’t want to. He still wore overalls, though they didn’t make him seem as out of place as they should have. The aura of darkness he carried with him seemed to match this place.

  “We’re here,” Nuri said. “Speak your piece.” There was an edge of confrontation in Nuri’s voice. More than Stefan would have liked. He let Nuri go on. His nerves had been frayed ever since Iago had confronted him.

  Iago rotated the cup under his hand. The glass fractured the light from an electric candle that was the sole illumination in the booth. “I’m fighting a war, gentlemen.”

  “With Eric Dietrich,” Nuri said.

  “His name is Melchior, and he is older than you can imagine. He was near a myth among my own kind. Among yours he was forgotten entirely.”

  “Your kind ...” Stefan whispered, letting the words hang in the air.

  A small smile drifted across Iago’s lips. “Ah, you still maintain that we’re the incarnation of evil. Believe what you will. You will still help me. I have stepped too far beyond the bounds of my own Covenant to allow you not to.”

  “What Covenant?” Stefan asked.

  “We shall be civil, then?” Iago’s gaze drifted downward and back, almost as if he could see the holy items in Stefan’s pocket. He looked from Stefan to Nuri and back again. “Believe me, I do not like using threats. I could have taken you, either of you, into the fold—you would have done all that I wished then, willingly. But that is counter to my purpose. My hope is that, hearing me out, you will see what the real evil is.” He took a sip from the glass. “I am evil in your eyes solely because your mythology tells you so. Melchior’s evil is much more tangible, much more threatening to both of us.”

  “We know he’s killing people—” Nuri started to say. Iago held up a hand, silencing him.

  “You know little or nothing,” Iago said. “It all begins and ends with the Covenant, a Covenant that has crumbled around me until I’ve come this far. Respect the sacrifice I am making by enlisting your aid, respect it by hearing me out without interruption.” There was a tangible force of will behind the statement, originating in his depthless eyes. Stefan felt as if he couldn’t interrupt even if he wanted to.

  “As long as there has been man, there have been those of the blood. Because we were ageless, lived in the night, and mostly because we fed on man, we’ve been hunted to near extinction countless times. Even as we chose humans to bring across into our own world, even as the rare human would rise to us on his own account, our numbers were always small. The last time we were brought that close to annihilation, those of the blood formed the Covenant.” Iago leaned forward. “That was close to a millennium ago. The Covenant was a simple law, designed to preserve us from man, and from ourselves. We do not slay those of the blood. Any act by one in thrall to us is taken as an act of ourselves. And we never reveal those of the blood to those outside the blood....”

  Iago allowed the sentence to trail off, allowing its significance to sink in.

  “My life would be forfeit for saying this much to you, if my society still existed here. However, in this demesne the Covenant now means as little as human law did a few years ago.” Iago frowned, and Stefan could feel the aura of hate, anger, and perhaps fear emanating from the being sitting across from him. He fingered the rosary.

  “There was, at the time of the Covenant, an old one. Melchior may have been thousands of years old by then. He ruled his own kingdom, safe from the purges mankind laid upon his own kind. He was ruthless in his rape of his people and his land, he amassed riches, and was unashamed in public displays of his nature. He would execute his rivals, human and vampire alike, beheading them, dismembering them, emasculating them.”

  Iago took another sip from his glass. “He slaughtered until the only ones of the blood under his rule were those under direct thrall to him. When the Covenant was made, he was the first one of us to be condemned by it. He was to be burned on a pyre of his own followers.

  “Somehow, he survived.”

  Iago paused, and Stefan felt the hold on his tongue loosen. He let the question rise to his lips. “How? Doesn’t fire kill your kind?”

  “As well as any of you. It wasn’t Melchior on the flames.” Iago lifted his hand, and while Stefan and Nuri watched, the flesh began to flow like melted wax. T
he fingers lengthened, nails grew into black talons, the skin became thick and leathery. Stefan squeezed his rosary as the hand before him turned demonic.

  “Our will,” Iago said, flexing the transformed hand, “Our soul, everything within us is bound within the blood. Our blood controls the flesh, moving it to our will. Wounds are nothing to us unless they destroy flesh and blood, dismember us, or destroy the brain or the heart.” He clenched the demon hand and the transformed flesh spilled back into itself, becoming nothing more than a hand again. “Melchior avoided the flames, by allowing another to be burned in his stead, a mere thrall.”

  Iago looked into Stefan’s eyes, and Stefan felt as if those disturbing eyes were seeing too deeply. In his head, Stefan began to recite Our Fathers until Iago’s gaze shifted to Nuri.

  “Those fulfilling the then-new Covenant believed that they had taken Melchior. What they saw was a corpse with Melchior’s face, and Melchior’s blood in its veins. They didn’t realize the extent of Melchior’s power, even then.”

  Iago held out his hand. “The power of my blood ends at my skin. I could make of you thralls bound to my blood, have my blood run through your veins, and you would be mine, but only in that your will would become mine. Melchior’s thralls not only become his will, but his flesh as well, his eyes, his ears.” Iago balled his fist. “My will can change my flesh. Melchior’s can change any of his thralls’.”

  The realization began to sink into Stefan. They never had a hope with the surveillance, not when Dietrich could change himself to appear as anything. He had probably walked by both of them, under their noses, countless times.

  “His power is such that he can walk abroad in full daylight without the sun driving the spirit from his flesh. He might even be able to survive the kind of dismemberment he issues his victims. Total, complete destruction of the body is the only certain way to kill him before he becomes unapproachable.”