Hold The Dark: A Markhat story (15 page)

“I’ve been consorting with priests. It’s good to speak to persons who aren’t likely to consign me to Hell, for a change.”

“I’ve heard about your conversation with the good Father Foon,” said Evis. He motioned to my chair. “May I sit?”

“Please do.” I found my chair, and Evis pulled out his dark glasses. “So you know I dropped by Wherthmore.”

“One of my men remained,” he said. I lifted an eyebrow. I hadn’t seen him. Perhaps Ronnie Sacks wasn’t the cream of the Avalante crop after all. “He conveyed your exchange to me. Most interesting. May I inquire as to the source of this sudden interest in Wherthmore?”

I took in a breath. I trusted Evis, to a point. I realized that I even liked him, fussy black receipt books and fangs and all. But I was not going to mention Darla’s name. Not to him, not to anyone.

“I met a man in the Park.” I sketched out Young Varney’s tale, omitting his name and occupation and Darla’s discovery of his keen eye for well-dressed young ladies. “So I figured I’d go to Wherthmore, see what I could shake up.” I shrugged. Let them think my outburst was part of some carefully planned stratagem. I didn’t know how else to explain it anyway.

“Fascinating,” said Evis. He forgot where he was, bared his lips and rested a long black fingernail on the middle of his chin. “Brilliant, even. If the comb-cleanser is indeed of Wherthmore, he will hear. He will know.”

“If he’s there.”

Evis shrugged. “I think it likely he is. The staff at Wherthmore is larger than the other four churches combined. Too, the artifacts necessary for the Cleansing are currently housed at Wherthmore, and have been for the last two years.”

I frowned. “I hadn’t known that. Wish I had.”

“We found this out only today,” he replied. He looked up at me and remembered to close his mouth. “Statistically, your outburst was well chosen. The number of staff and proximity to the required artifacts suggest Wherthmore is indeed the base for the Cleansing of the combs. Especially since, if you say, the Cleansing itself is incomplete—even an apprentice based at Wherthmore would find it much easier to slip in and use the artifacts than anyone based at another Church.” He cocked his head. “Still, Mr. Markhat. Abusing priests in that manner—why, you’re likely to find yourself right beside me, in the Pit, one day.”

I sighed. “Maybe. But I am more concerned right now that our rogue priest is making plans to pay us a visit.”

Evis shook his head. “No, I doubt that the man you have described and the Cleanser are the same man. Indeed, my men have spent the better part of two days observing the staff of the various Arms of Inquisition, and I can tell you that priests and apprentices alike tend to be balding, corpulent men of an age far removed from our man in the Park.”

I shook my head. “You’re sure of that?”

“The artifacts I mentioned are potent ones indeed. Hair loss is common among the Hands. Our amorous Park fancier has hair.”

I frowned. Evis bit back a smile.

“Do not despair,” he said. “This Thin Man, as you call him, undoubtedly takes his orders from a priest, or from halfdead, or both. If we assume it is the Thin Man’s job to choose and entice the women, then he is the man we most want to meet, is he not?”

“How do you know he’s the low man in the outfit?”

“He does the out and about tasks. He is most exposed to scrutiny. And whether he knows it or not, he is the man his superiors will sacrifice, should attention be drawn to their activities.” Evis shrugged. “Call it a guess, if you will. But even though we may have brought terror to the priest and the halfdead, it is this Thin Man who will be sent to meet you. Because he is expendable. And, I suspect, because he is a fool.”

I leaned back. I wasn’t comforted. “How many persons do you figure are involved in this group?”

Evis shrugged. “Logistics suggest ten to twenty. Mostly halfdead.”

“Is that all?”

Evis laughed. “I certainly hope so. Because, once we find them out, it shall fall to Avalante to kill them. Priest and halfdead and all.”

“The Church won’t appreciate that.”

“They’d appreciate being implicated in a vampire blood-cult even less,” said Evis. He shrugged, sighed and regarded me with a woeful expression. “I wish we had more time. I fear we rely far too heavily on surmise and assumption.”

“It’s hare-brained, at best. But I haven’t got anything better. Have you?”

He hadn’t. So we made our plans. He said he’d have people out of sight, but nearby. I agreed they’d need to be well out of sight—halfdead might accompany our friend, as well, and it wouldn’t do to frighten off any nervous callers.

And then, for the second time that night, I sinned. Not blasphemy again—twice a night is a bit much, even for devils such as I—but deception.

I didn’t mention Mama’s hex. I didn’t mention Ethel’s army. I didn’t mention my plan to go and get Martha Hoobin as soon as we knew the meeting place, with half the New People neighborhood in tow. I didn’t mention any of that despite the fact that I trusted Evis, or found his fanged schoolmarm manner disarming. But I couldn’t let myself forget that someone with a bigger desk than his might decide the whole matter was best solved by slaughtering the renegade vampires and then dispatching Martha Hoobin, sole survivor and living witness to a blood-cult whose very existence could topple all the dark Houses, one by one.

Evis nodded, jotted notes and listened carefully to everything I said. And when he left, for the first time, he held out his hand, and I shook it.

“We shall keep a man on the street,” he said, as he left. “In case you have rude visitors.”

“Thanks.” I meant it. The name Encorla Hisvin would keep all but fools from bringing me mischief, but the world is filled with fools. A vampire on the stoop has stopping power few bulldogs can match. “Tell him to knock if he feels like playing cards. And ask him not to bite the neighbors—they deserve it, the ingrates, but half of them owe me money.”

Evis laughed, and he was gone.

Chapter Eleven

That night, I sat up, keeping halfdead hours while I waited for visitors. I whetted my Army knife until the blade was sharper than the Dark Angel’s scythe, and I knew all the while if a pair of angry vampires marched through my door a dozen sharp knives wouldn’t do me a damned bit of good.

I toyed with the idea of begging a crossbow and a brace of silver-tipped halfdead bolts from Evis. I pondered the wisdom of relying so heavily on his counsel and cooperation.

But mostly, I whetted my knife and poked huge gaping holes in our plot to snare Martha Hoobin’s tall, thin abductor.

Poking the holes wasn’t difficult. What if the man who showed up really didn’t know where Martha was? What if she were already dead, already buried in a shallow grave, half-awake, perhaps, gnawed by a terrible hunger that would soon drive her toward the light?

What if Martha really had just left town, a small fortune in paper crowns tucked close to her breast?

I put the knife down. Three-leg Cat drifted in, licked his good front paw and drifted out again just as the Big Bell pealed eleven times.

Hours past my bedtime, and I wasn’t even yawning. Maybe I’ve been listening to Mama too much, I thought, because I began to jump and start at every pop of the walls, every creak and groan of the ceiling. Vampires on the roof. Halfdead ’neath the floor.

Blood upon a needle, turning toward my door.

I stood and paced, knife in hand, and turned my thoughts to finer things, Darla Tomas chief among them.

Had it really been a day, since we’d kissed goodbye?

Had I really been too busy to go to her house, even once?

I vowed I’d remedy that, come tomorrow. I vowed I’d see her, halfdead plots or no. Bring the wine, she’d said.

“I certainly will,” I spoke aloud. “Something with a fancy label. Something with a cork.”

Only then did I realize what I felt hadn’t all been whorehouse mojo, that day I met Darla at the Velvet. No, it was an older magic, a magic that needed no cauldrons, no muttered words.

I paced, I pondered and I planned. Yes, come tomorrow, Darla and I—we’d make mojo all our own, and let the wide wicked world be damned.

Even so, my room got cold. Cold and colder and then colder still. I quickened my pace. I blew into my cupped hands. I cursed Rannit’s fickle springs.

The Big Bell clanged out midnight.

Hex-paws scampered sudden up and down my spine. My breath steamed out, hanging in a fog in the still, frigid air.

A whippoorwill cried out. And another.

I stopped my pacing, stood still. Because in that dead cold air, between the notes of the whippoorwill’s cry, I smelled, strong and warm, the scent of Darla’s hair.

“Oh God, no.” I said it aloud. I said it, and I gripped my knife tight. I’d taken one single useless step toward my door when something was hurled hard against it.

Hurled hard. Then it fell and was still.

I charged. I cursed and struck the door and fumbled with the bolt. Finally, I flung it open.

Horror fell inside, head lolling, blood spilling.

I may have screamed, even then. For an instant, I saw Allie Sands again, expected the ruined form before me to rise jerkily to its feet, moving like a badly played puppet, dark fluids leaking and spewing with each small exertion.

But this blood was red. Red and still warm.

Blood covered her nude body, covered skin and wounds alike, left a long smear oozing down my door.

She had no hands. No hands. Her wrists were gnawed stumps. Her lower jaw was gone, too, grasped, pulled and torn away. Gone like her eyes, like her hair and her ears—bitten or torn but bloody and gone. She had no face.

And just like Allie Sands, her abdomen hung open—open and empty, save the broken ends of splintered white ribs.

But I knew. Knew her name. The tiny butterfly tattoo, one she’d shown me in a fit of giggles just two days ago, was there bright and sad beneath the blood at the small of her back.

I tried to deny it. Tried to tell myself lots of woman have tattoos. Tried to tell myself she had no face, had no way to be identified. But all the while, I knew. Knew it was Darla. Knew it as I knelt down, as I reached out to take her hand, cried out when my fingers closed on the warm stump of her arm.

I did scream, then. I screamed, and I caught her up. Mama said I was just standing there screaming when she heard and she came and she saw.

I don’t recall anything else, until Mama pulled the sheets from my bed and took Darla from me and wrapped her in them and laid her out at the foot of my bed.

All the while, the whippoorwills sang.

I will speak no more of that night, save to say that I awoke to dim daylight, and the sound of Mama’s brush scrubbing dark blood off my door.

I rose. I rose, I bathed and I dressed. Mama watched me go to the bathhouse, watched me return, never spoke a word.

Tomorrow had come. I sat at my desk and recalled my promise from the night before. A bottle of wine, and the wide wicked world be damned.

And so, I reflected, it was. Damned.

And more to come.

The Watch came, with their black wagon, and Mama saw Darla off. The number of bite wounds covering her left no question to her fate. Darla would rise, unless the crematorium’s flames consumed her first. Rise not like Evis, but like Allie Sands—a ruined, shrieking thing gone mad with pain and hunger. Those who slew her had surely known that.

I listened to the dead wagon rattle off, heard the driver cackle and shout. As the sound of him faded away I closed my eyes, clenched my fists and began to count my breaths.

Evis sent men, and Mama sent them away. More came, and she flailed at them with her ragged broom and screeched and cussed and they fled.

Ethel Hoobin came and was admitted. I spoke to him. Mama says I was calm and coherent. That I had assured him my trap was set to spring upon Martha’s abductors, and he was to gather his troops and wait for Mama’s call.

Ethel may have known about Darla, or maybe not, but he asked his questions and nodded once at my reply. He got up and left without another word.

Finally, Mama came inside, propped her broom by my door and threw my bolt.

She sat. I felt her eyes upon me, though I did not open my own.

“Boy,” she said, at last. “Boy, I’m so sorry.”

I clenched my jaw.

“She’d have been good for you. And you’d have been good to her. I seen that much. Didn’t see no further.”

Mama’s voice broke. She bit back a sob, and I opened my eyes.

“We’ll never know that.”

“I saw death a comin’. I swear I never saw it comin’ for her.” She brought up a hand, to mop at her eyes. “Boy, I’m so damned sorry.”

We sat for a long time. Somebody came and pounded on the door. I looked up and saw the black hat Darla had playfully donned just yesterday. I let the man outside knock and shout.

Mama mumbled something under her breath and the pounding stopped. She mumbled something else and the shadow on my glass turned and fell away.

“I reckon,” she said, after a long ragged breath. “I reckon you’ll be a goin’ after them what did this thing.”

I nodded a “yes”.

Mama squeezed her lips together so they wouldn’t quiver. “I reckon you got to,” she said, after a while. “I don’t reckon it matters none that I still see Death’s shadow, a hangin’ at your door?”

I nodded “no”.

Mama stood. I didn’t look up, didn’t see the tears, couldn’t watch another heart break that day.

“I reckon I can’t argue against that. I reckon them bastards got to die.”

I listened to the street. Yes, I thought. They’ve got to die. Again. And this time, they’re going to stay dead forever.

“Promise me one thing, boy. Promise me you won’t go nowhere, won’t do nothin’, till I get back.” She drew in a ragged breath. “I ain’t got no right to ask. Not after what I done. What I didn’t do.” I could hear her grind her teeth. “And I can’t make that up. But there’s one thing I can do. It ain’t right. It ain’t smart. And I reckon it might get us both kilt. But it might get some of them heartless bastards gutted, so I reckon it’s worth the price.”

I said nothing. I barely heard.

“Boy, you got to wait. Just this once. Please.”

I neither moved nor spoke. Everywhere I looked, there was blood—tiny flecks and drips, drying to the color of old rust.

Mama sobbed, stood, turned and left, and I was alone with all my newborn ghosts.