House of Corruption (13 page)

“Was this your solution?” he said as Reynard’s blood pumped across his hand. “The leeching from amateur metalwork?” He wiped it clean on his trousers and stuffed it into his pocket. “Extraordinary.”

He wiped his bloody hands with a nearby burial shroud. Reynard writhed at his feet and, when the smothering voice left his brain, he sucked in a deep draught of air and coughed blood. He inhaled another breath and the pain gripped his senses, forced him to scream. The rope binding his wrists to his ankles snapped in two. He rolled to his belly, pressing his chest against the floor as if to quench his gaping wound. Slithering toward the mausoleum entrance, his wrists and ankles still lashed, he left a trail of dark blood in his wake.

He crawled outside. Lasha sobbed in the dark, the imposing shape of the native man pressed against her.

A heavy sensation, a tremor, seized his spine.

—
No—

Pressure pushed behind his eyes. He squeezed them closed and he coughed, retching. He rolled to his back and fresh blood burst from his wound.

—
Not—

Muscle mass increased in his limbs. Bones and skin strained to compensate but they were sluggish, agonizing against a body reorganizing itself. The knuckles in his hands and feet spread wide. Muscles thickened in his shoulders and joints, forcing him to arch forward as bones slid from their sockets. The pressure snapped the remaining ropes from off his wrists and ankles. Bruises splotched the flesh where the ropes had been, around his throat and under his eyes. Seams at his shirt and trousers split open. Toenails plunged through both stocking and shoe-leather as bones cracked under translucent flesh. His breath deepened into ragged, feral gasps full of fluid.

“I’d thought a man of your reputation…” Tukebote said, emerging from the mausoleum. The crushed bullet moved between his fingers. “…Would have cultivated some discipline. The finality of your cure was greatly exaggerated.”

“What is wrong with him?” Lasha asked. She sobbed, held in place by the strong hands of the man behind her. “What have you
done
?”

“Prepare yourself, child. It is a terrible thing to keep secrets. Best you see the truth whilst under my protection.”

Ivory hair thrust from Reynard’s hands and up into his arms, blooming along the curvature of his spine and beaded with blood. Muscles rippled under ruined clothing as the last vestige of Reynard LaCroix fell headlong into darkness. He wept, shuddering, as his face cracked into a lupine muzzle. Screams of a little girl fired into his head, the cries of men and women and children bleeding in his mouth.

He bellowed a deep, agonizing cry. It was no longer was the cry of a man. The Beast, chained and lashed and denied for years, came raging to the surface.

Lasha started to scream, her horror—

S
he knows she KNOWS oh god she knows don’t look DON’T LOOK!

Tukebote spat upon him. “Pathetic.”

Lasha gasped a breath and started to scream again. Tukebote slapped her hard across the face.

“Quiet, child.”

“Leave me alone!” Lasha cried.

Tukebote raised his hand, higher.

The air burst with sound—a loud
crack
—and the valet’s shoulder exploded with a splash of blood. He thrust backward upon the grass. Racing into the clearing, Grant held the Winchester and cocked another bullet into its chamber, Savoy following alongside with his bag slapping at his hip.

“
Arté!
” Lasha screamed.

The servant holding her cuffed a hand against her neck. She collapsed limp into his arms. He hefted her over his shoulder and bore her into the trees. Grant altered his course in pursuit. Another servant raised a pistol but Grant fired the rifle first; the bullet tore through the man’s forearm and sent his pistol spinning into the brush. He shouted a fell oath and raced after his fellow into the dark.

“Maligang will devour you,” said another voice. The third servant stood at the edge of the clearing. “Eat you both.”

“Best keep your mouth shut,” Grant said.

“Cast your souls to the River of Death.”

The man slid his silver dagger from his belt. With deft hands he separated the blade’s handle to reveal a smaller blade attached by a strong cord. In a blur, he spun both blades in a fan-like motion—spinning at his waist, to his shoulder, raising to throw.

Before the knives could fly, a violent shape leaped from the lawn. It caught the man by the shoulders, bore him down, and sank its fangs into his throat. The man screamed. The creature bore down again, biting, thrashing him like a rabbit until his voice died with a wet gurgle. The beast was neither wolf nor man but both, immense and heaving. Flesh peeled from its wrists and ankles where hemp had rubbed raw; bruises strung from muscle to muscle like cancerous pearls; a pink, fleshy wound in its chest throbbing with heartbeat.

The beast released its grip, swallowed, and tore the man so violently his head split off his shoulders.

Grant cocked the lever and lifted the rifle.

“
No!
” Savoy cried.

Grant hesitated. The creature roared at them, teeth snapping with flecks of blood. It dropped to its hands and feet and ran with leaping strides, shouldering through the surrounding trees where Lasha had been taken, snapping branches in its wake. Savoy started to speak. He expected Grant to say, do something, but instead saw him watching—

Edward Tukebote.

Gone were his formal posture and barrister manner—replaced by a rotten scarecrow, his suit a mockery upon his ghastly frame. As if unearthed from a dry grave his head was now a mummified shroud, grinning with drawn-back lips and eyelids, oblivious to the green fluid bubbling from the wound in his shoulder.

“
Put down the rifle
,” he whispered.

Grant hesitated, bent toward the grass.

“
Put down the rifle
.”

Tukebote began walking toward them, grinning his death’s mask.

“Mister Grant!” Savoy cried.

Grant lifted the rifle and fired. The bullet buried into the valet’s stomach, but he did not slow, lurching first into a swift walk then faster, faster, reaching with hands like ten little knives black with blood. Grant fired again. The second bullet blossomed near the first and still Tukebote grinned, unmoved, nearly upon them.

“By the power of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...!” Savoy cried.

He removed a vial of clear liquid from his satchel and squeezed off the cork. With a sweep of his arm he splashed the liquid in the sign of the cross; as the droplets struck Tukebote’s face they turned to steam, dancing across his pallid flesh. Savoy dropped the vial, reached into his satchel, and raised up a brass crucifix.

“I adjure you, evil spirit,” he cried, “and stand fast!”

 Blisters erupted across Tukebote’s face, breaking open with moist pops. He fell to the ground, shrieking. His body writhed until his throaty noise became awful, a breathy, choking heave. He stiffened, tight, and with a sickening crack his head wrenched upwards from his shoulders. It tore away from his body, slithering, the head trailing its dripping spine like a grotesque worm. The headless body collapsed inward with a stink of rancid vinegar.

The skeletal head and spine lifted into the air. It hung liked some ghastly balloon, glared at them with dead eyes—then came at them like a snake. The men dropped to their knees. The death’s head snapped with sharp teeth, sailed over them, and disappeared high into the dark with a high-pitched wail—

—then it was gone.

For a moment, both men could only breathe.

“What in the hell,” Grant said, “just happened?”

12

Savoy cracked the reins, sent the horses into a gallop, and the cart’s wheels clattered along the cobblestone. When tongues lolled and sweat foamed on the animals’ backs he snapped even harder. The horses turned a tight corner and the cart skidded, the wheels slipping, throwing the cart hard against the curb with a resounding thud. The horses thrashed their heads. Both men strained at the reins.

“That’s enough,” Grant said. He tore the reins from Savoy’s grip.

“The alarm has been sounded,” Savoy said. “Lasha’s abductors are revealed and we are still alive—and that means they must leave town. Miss Carlovec is a woman of wealth. The concierge at her hotel said something about a private Pullman. The only place engines leave this time of night is from Louisville & Nashville Station.” He looked up and down the street. “And Reynard is—
Dear God
—he is...”

“You’re saying that animal was Lasha’s brother.”

“Yes,” Savoy replied.

“You’re insane.”

“You may be right,” Savoy said, with no irony. “I cannot adequately explain what we saw, but you have seen it. You have
seen
it! If poor Lasha is alive, I am confident they will smuggle her out of the city by train.”

“Tell the police.”

“And say
what
?” Savoy said. “I also cannot stand idly by while that poor creature runs wild in the streets. There is no telling what it might do in his condition.” His voice shook. “How could things have gone so terribly wrong?”

“Tell them any damn story you want,” Grant said, giving the reins back and stepping down from the cart. “Tell them
something
.” He unhitched one of the horses from the cart, pulling its leather harness off its back. The other animal sensed the change and tried to move, but Savoy urged it back with a tight pull. “I can try that station, see if I can head them off. Give me the rifle and—”

“You’re still a wanted man,” Savoy said.

“I’ll take that chance.”

From his bag, Savoy removed a brochure from the St. Charles Hotel, and upon it he wrote directions to the train station. Grant took his blanket from the cart, threw it over the horse’s back and climbed on, soothing the animal with steady strokes down its neck. Savoy pressed the directions, the rifle, a tie-string satchel of extra bullets and a pocket watch into Grant’s hands.

“Can you hitch that cart with just one?” Grant asked.

“I’ll manage,” Savoy said. “Find Miss Lasha and bring her home.”

“If I cannot find her?” Grant asked.

“You must.”

In twenty minutes Grant arrived at the Louisville and Nashville Station. He pressed the bullets Savoy gave him into the Winchester’s chamber and loaded the first with a swift snap of the lever. The depot was little more than a coal-and-oil stained crossroads for every freight train passing through town. At that time of night it was quiet, a nest of sleeping iron serpents.

He urged his horse alongside the passenger platform, a gaslight oasis where a few men gathered in common attire, some lounging on benches, others waddling with luggage. A train steamed on the far side of the platform. Grant dismounted the horse at a hitching rail—two other horses stood hitched there—and hurried to the train, peering into windows, calling Lasha’s name, giving her description to anyone who cared to listen.

No one had seen her. He approached a man in a blue uniform, someone he guessed was a conductor. “Anything else leave here recently?” he asked.

“Freight to Nashville,” the man said.

“Any foreigners?”

“Don’t recall.”

“How about a fancy car? A Pullman?”

The conductor looked at Grant’s rifle, then at Grant’s face. “Now that you mention it, there was a Pullman at the end of a freight line, bound for Houston, maybe. Or Atlanta.” He motioned to the east. “Just missed it.”

“Anything else?”

“Another freight headed west, ‘bout an hour ago.”

Grant raced across the platform. He slid upon the horse’s back, kicked it into a gallop, and raced from the station. When the hooves touched clear road he kicked again and the animal burst into lightning.

He followed the rail line heading east, crossing from street to street, behind tenements and rickety warehouses, weaving along rough trails as he rejoined the tracks. Two miles further, where the tracks curved away from the road, he caught sight of a head of steam.

There
.

In the distance, cutting a leisurely path through New Orleans’ outskirts, a train puffed a column of smoke as it clacked out of town. The engine indeed pulled a long line of freight and lumber with a private Pullman weaving at the back, complete with an iron-wrought balcony and woodwork trim as if for a presidential candidate. Its speed was subdued, sluggish, but Grant knew it would throttle to full steam by the time it left the city proper.

Grant raced down Lafayette Street and closed the gap. When the track curved north he followed, urging the horse off the road and along a grassy ridge. He gained ground until he rode alongside the car, catching slim silhouettes behind curtained windows. Was Miss Lasha one of them? He barely knew the girl and here he was, riding like a madman. The thought came to hightail it south and catch the first steamer into the Gulf, yet that temptation died at the sick knowing he had not been there,
not been there
when Emily needed him—

“Miss Lasha!” he cried.

The night air cracked like a whip. Crouching upon the balcony, a wiry man lifted a rifle and squeezed off another shot. Grant felt the bullet's wake as it screamed over his head.

Right train
.

The man fired again. The bullet whistled near Grant’s ear. He urged his horse to slow and cross the tracks. Legs tight against the flanks he raised the Winchester to his face, daring to pause and aim before he pulled the trigger. With a squeal and a spark his shot ricocheted off the balcony railing. Grant cocked another bullet into the chamber and fired again—

The bullet splintered the sniper’s rifle stock. The man fell back with a cry, tossed the ruined weapon off the train and disappeared into the car.

Grant urged the horse with one, final sprint, pulling beside the balcony. He reached, clutching the iron post, until the horse jerked to the right and Grant did not think, did not consider his options as he slid off its back. One foot caught the balcony while the other dangled in space, just a moment, before he pulled himself onto and over the railing. The horse tossed its head, slowed, and disappeared into the dark.