by Pavel Kornev
"Have you considered the library? Ask Theodor, he'll show you where it is."
"I know where your home library is!" the girl snapped, offended. "Leo, you're unbearable! Just think: how could one just sit and read for whole days on end? That would drive any person crazy!"
"Well, I do not know about that. Try catching the leprechaun, then. That might perk you up."
Elizabeth-Maria just furrowed her brow, but my butler supported me.
"Madame, I think you ought to try and find his treasure," he advised.
"More silver?" I sighed fatefully.
"Now the knives have gone missing," Theodor confirmed.
"That little imaginary bastard has earned a good spanking," the girl smiled dreamily. "It'll be nice to give him a crack him on the nose."
"He probably doesn't have a treasure," I reminded them. "He's a figment of my imagination."
"All leprechauns have treasure," my butler said, still stubborn. The disappearance of our silver had affected him to the depths of his soul. "Whether he's imaginary or not, it’s in his nature."
"Perhaps I really will do that," Elizabeth-Maria decided.
I just shook my head and went outside.
I went up into the kitchen, practically falling over in exhaustion, but I didn't forget to close the blinds. After that, I took off my clothes and flopped back onto my bed, instantly becoming immersed in a deep, anxious dream.
In my dream, I was back at the circus but this time, the whole building was devoid of even a single living soul; my only company was the leprechaun. I understood perfectly that it was all just a dream, so I left the box, went into the vestibule and again ran into Elizabeth-Maria von Nalz. I tried to grab her outstretched hand, but the girl laughed and easily slipped away. I followed her down the empty corridors, went behind the stage and, somehow, we ended up in the basement of my own house.
It got dark, quiet and cold.
Suddenly, an ice chunk caved in, crackled and, like the quicksand of legend, pulled me down into an icy hell, into the underworld itself...
I dashed, grabbed the lowest stair and tried to get out, but I found no measure of success. The icy whirlpool was pulling me down with an ever-growing force. My fingers were getting numb in the cold and slipping, breaking my finger nails. The pain was twisting and breaking my joints, and I certainly would have fallen into the black icy abyss, but then something lashed across my face.
Instantly, I woke up, flung the towel that had just been thrown on my face off, and sat up in bed.
"Bugger!" the leprechaun grumbled, sitting in an armchair with a book in his hands. On one armrest, there was a glass containing a burning candle. On the other, there was a half-empty bottle of wine. "You're distracting me!"
I took a few deep sighs and fell back on my pillow.
"Aren't you a bit too old for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?" I asked the pipsqueak.
"Stop it!" the albino demanded, licking his finger and turning the page. "Sleep! You caught me!"
But sleep had already left me. I got up on an elbow and asked my fantasy:
"Who was that man you were cutting up this morning?"
The leprechaun stared at me dismally and grudgingly answered:
"Doesn’t matter. He was creeping around. Being cheeky. Asking for trouble!"
I didn't reproach the albino for killing the burglar, but I also wasn't going to let the topic die.
"What did you mean to do with the body?" I asked the pipsqueak.
He cursed under his breath and kept staring at the book.
"What did you mean to do?" I repeated my question.
"See, Leo, this is the very kind of heartlessness that leads to stray animals starving on the street," the leprechaun answered without looking away from the book. He then demanded: "Bugger! Don't bother me when I’m reading!"
Stray animals? Had he been planning to feed the body to street dogs?
The last thing this neighborhood needed was somebody training the strays to be man-eaters!
I turned onto my other side, pulling my comforter tighter and said:
"Don't do that anymore!"
The leprechaun didn't answer, though. He just didn't have time: down below, something fell with a deafening clang. So much that it shook the floor.
"Bugger!" the pipsqueak exclaimed, even spilling some wine in surprise. "The cupboard?"
Sounded like it. In a flash, I jumped out of bed, grabbed my Cerberus from the bedside table, yanked my Roth-Steyr from the holster and ran for the door. I dashed into the corridor and nearly slammed into Elizabeth-Maria as she peeked out of her room.
"Out of the way!" I shouted at her as I dashed by, and the girl, in her nightgown, ran after me.
Headlong, I ran down to the first story, jumped across the kitchen into the entryway with the door flung wide and went back into the guest room. I stepped over the overturned cupboard and immediately caught a dark figure in my sights that was pressing my half-strangled butler against the wall. Under his hat with a wide flat brim, there were swarming shadows; the hands grabbing Theodor's neck looked a bit darker in tone than the average New-Babylonian’s.
A Moor?!
"Let him go!" I demanded, not having made up my mind to shoot.
The strangler slowly turned toward Elizabeth-Maria as she came through another door into the guest room.
In the blink of an eye, the girl was at the fireplace, grabbing the saber down from the wall and throwing herself at the malefic. He jumped away from my butler at full speed and stepped out to meet the succubus, opening his hand in a protective gesture. The sharpened steel made contact with the flesh with a mournful wail and was flung back, having left just a little bleeding scratch.
I shot, aiming at the head; the Moor caught the bullet from thin air, threw a chair at the girl with another hand and flew at me! But, he tripped over the leprechaun, who had just appeared from out of nowhere. The strangler quickly jumped to his feet, but fell back down when the albino slit his tendons with a rusty kitchen knife. His flesh, which didn't give to normal steel, yielded with surprising ease. The blade rasped against his bones, but the strangler didn't even scream.
In a flash, the malefic was ensconced in shadows. They became an extension of his arms and flew out in all directions, threatening to reach me and enslave my conscience. Stumbling away from them, I took aim again, but then Elizabeth-Maria stepped forward. With the saber, she struck the Moor's neck with all her might. His head, cut clean off, flew from his shoulders and rolled across the floor.
"Simple as that!" the succubus snarled, with very little human in her voice.
After that, the girl’s eyes, glowing crimson, stopped on the leprechaun. And he immediately held the kitchen knife out in front of him, and put his left hand behind his back like a born swordsman.
"You wanna dance, kiddo?" he asked, jumping toward her, then jerking back. "One-two!" With that simple maneuver, he came noticeably closer to the door.
"That's enough!" I croaked out. Then I added, now less loud, but somewhat more substantially: "He might not have been alone."
It worked. Elizabeth-Maria, the bloodied saber in her hand, pressed herself against the window. Theodor ran over to lock the front door. The leprechaun was still acting like nothing had happened. He picked up his accordioned top hat, shook it straight over his knee and spit on the floor.
"Bugger! There goes the rug!"
And in fact, the strangler's black blood had poured out over practically half the guest room.
"It's quite a bad time to be a rug in this house," the succubus joked and told us: "I couldn't see anyone in the yard, but there might be someone hiding in the garden."
"Why wait for them?" I snorted and turned to my butler who was dragging out a double-barreled hunting shotgun and a box of rounds. "Theodor, is everything alright with you?"
"My condition does have certain advantages," he replied, turning his head from side to side. "I don't need to breathe anymore, for one."
"And wh
y is no one asking if I'm alright?" the leprechaun asked capriciously, but everyone had forgotten about him.
"You'd be better off shutting up!" Elizabeth-Maria advised him, wiping the saber blade on the hem of her already blood-soaked nightgown.
"Bugger!" the pipsqueak cursed and, filled with a sense of his own merit, went out the door.
And just in the nick of time, too. The succubus was already barely holding on as it was.
"You should have asked where he hid his treasure," Theodor suggested belatedly, lighting a gas lamp. But I just waved a hand:
"We've got enough problems."
After setting my pistols on the coffee table, I touched the sabre-severed head and looked at the cut with a measure of disgust. It was smooth and even, as if made by a guillotine. Elizabeth-Maria could clearly slash with unbelievable force.
"Anything out of the ordinary?" the girl inquired with a chuckle.
"It’s cold," I answered, wiping my fingers on the rug.
The dead-man's skin was frigid and slimy, like that of a reptile. And yes, the malefic was noticeably colder than a fresh corpse should have been.
Elizabeth-Maria went away from the window and kicked the decapitated head away.
"A Moor," she winced fastidiously, looking at the black face with a wide nose and meaty set of lips. "Leo, you've got a real talent for making friends!"
"What can you tell me about him?" I asked calmly.
The girl put the saber back over the fireplace and shook her head:
"Well, dear, now I see why you were asking about vampires."
"Just don't tell me that was a vampire. I can tell the difference between malefics and vampires."
"That's no malefic," the girl objected. "It's a malefic's servant. Leo, your grandfather's saber came in very handy."
"The leprechaun made the first strike."
"And that really is surprising," Elizabeth-Maria snorted, going down on her knees. She took the corpse's hand with a wide slice across the whole palm and called me over: "Leo, look!"
I squatted next to her and asked:
"At what exactly?"
"At his palm."
I asked the chalk-pale Theodor to bring a kerosene lamp and only then saw what exactly put the girl on edge. The Moor's palm was covered with the gray lines of old tattoos. The fanciful symbols were dotted the back side of his hand as well; they began at the fingers and went into the cuff of his spacious sleeve.
"An Egyptian message," I determined. "It looks to be an older form of writing."
"He isn't quite that old," Elizabeth-Maria retorted and asked: "Theodor, knife."
When my butler brought the sharp kitchen knife back from the kitchen, the girl split the sleeve all the way to the shoulder in a confident motion and smiled in self-satisfaction:
"Like I said!"
There were strange tattoos adorning his arm, and even crawling up his collarbone, but there they were fresh and clearly marked by swollen and inflamed skin.
"Curious," I muttered in perplexity.
"Leo, dear! You can't seriously have thought you were unique, right?" the girl laughed, looking expressively at my own tattoos. In just a few motions, she cut all the clothes off the headless Moor.
Beyond both arms, there were markings covering the heart region; then, Elizabeth-Maria went all out and turned the dead body onto its stomach. His spine was also marked with tattoos. They ended at chest height. The ones on his upper spinal bones seemed to have been made not so long ago.
"We're lucky the protection didn't go up to the neck," I said with a shiver.
"There are many ways of killing that which considers itself invincible," said Elizabeth-Maria, shrugging her shoulders. She then stood up straight and suggested: "Leo, go to sleep. We'll clean it all up."
"The last tattoos," I said, not moving. "How long ago do you think they were made?"
"Yesterday or the day before," the girl announced without the slightest hesitation. "In such creatures, everything heals in a matter of days."
I didn't argue with her opinion, just nodded.
"I need you to cut out some of the new tattoos for me," I warned her. "A few of the old ones wouldn't hurt, either."
Elizabeth-Maria looked back at me expressively, but didn't inquire about my strange interest in the dead man's tattoos.
"Sure thing," she promised, covering her mouth with her hand as she yawned. "And, if you'd be so kind, please imagine I've got insomnia. Mortals waste a surprising amount of time on sleep. It's... irrational."
"But nice," I snorted, taking my pistols from the coffee table and heading into the carriage-house.
There were itchy ants crawling up my back, but not because of the cold, even though I was walking through the hallway in nothing but my long johns. It was just that I had always considered my house an impregnable fortress. But now, for the second night in a row, there were unwelcome strangers just strolling about.
That scared me. Scared me and made me angry.
I considered such intrusions a personal insult, a shot to the heart, a deed somewhat more humiliating than even kidnapping me and torturing me with electricity.
I wanted to get revenge and wasn't preparing to wait for the dish to get cold. The Moor's last tattoos had been done in New Babylon, which is why I was planning on going straight off to find the artist who did them.
But first, I decided to prepare for new surprises. No, I didn't screw the wicks into the hand grenades. Instead, I cleaned the Madsen machine gun of grease and set about loading up ten clips of thirty bullets each. After that, I loaded another few magazines for the semi-automatic rifles and loaded a few Mausers. But I didn't bring them with me, and left them in a box on top of the other pistols.
Guns are no panacea, but they do tend to come in handy when you're out of other arguments. In the end, there was nothing to stop a vampire from sending normal cutthroats after my soul. In addition, someone from the illustrious gang could show up. I really needed to stay on guard.
But thoughts of guns and plans for revenge instantly flew out of my head. I just had to get up into the bedroom. The leprechaun was standing opposite my pencil portrait of Elizabeth-Maria von Nalz with a rolled cigarette smoking in one hand and an open bottle of wine in the other, clicking his tongue in perplexity.
I froze at the threshold, then shook off my consternation and, setting my pistols on the bedside table, said pointedly:
"I wonder if you can be hurt by a silver bullet?"
The pipsqueak looked angrily back at me, but didn't walk away from the drawing. He then ran full speed to the chair and blocked me off with a book. He was not planning on leaving the bedroom.
I cursed out soundlessly, put out the gas lamps the leprechaun had lit and laid down in bed.
Should I kick my own fantasy out the door? Nonsense...
6
I WOKE UP to the sunrise. It smelled unbearably of tobacco and booze in the room. There was an empty bottle lying on the floor. The arm of the chair had spots of wax on it, but the leprechaun had disappeared: based on the flung-wide door, he had gone off to play on Elizabeth-Maria's nerves.
Last night’s events still seemed like a bad dream. But no, they were no dream; when I got down onto the first floor, I saw Theodor, his sleeves rolled up, still washing the black blood off the parquet floor of the guest room. There was no longer a rug in the room.
"Is the body in the icehouse?" I asked.
"Yes sir, Viscount," confirmed my butler, the color not yet returned to his face. From under the high raised collar of his shirt, I could make out the lilac-black marks of the strangler's hand.
"Curses!" I exclaimed. "We'll soon have a proper mass grave in our basement!"
"Two bodies isn't so many," Elizabeth-Maria said, responding to the noise.
The leprechaun slipped past after her into the room, not able to hold back laughter and even wiping his dirty kerchief to dry his newly formed tears.
"I see the two of you have found a common tongue?" I sn
orted.
The pipsqueak carefully touched his swollen nose and grumbled:
"Bugger..."
"He grabbed my feet from under the bed," the girl answered my unasked question.
"Well, you're a hussy!" the leprechaun snorted, deftly hopping up onto the windowsill and staring out the window. Based on that, my imaginary childhood friend was no longer intending to hide.
Curses, look at the company I'm starting to keep!
Elizabeth-Maria sized up the pipsqueak with a hateful gaze, but didn't get caught on his words and asked:
"Would you like breakfast, Leo?"
"I'd have some tea," I decided and reminded her: "What about the skin?"
"Do you doubt my ability to remove human skin?" The girl melted into a sweet smile, under which there was hidden something rarely unpleasant. "Well don’t, Leo. I am quite skilled at it."
I walked into the kitchen. There on the table were many long strips of black human skin drying out; the succubus had clearly taken to the flaying with aplomb. My appetite disappeared in a flash.
"Your choice, dear," Elizabeth-Maria allowed. "Whichever piece you like best."
"Very funny," I frowned, nervously finishing my tea and asking her to wrap the first strip of skin in a rag.
The girl did what I asked, then took the two longest of the remaining strips and started weaving them together with such a mundane look you’d think she was doing macramé.
"What are you doing?" I asked, startled.
"Your grandfather's saber is nice," the girl smiled in an untoward manner, "but I wouldn't say no to a more reliable weapon. Some enemies are easier to strangle than cut to pieces."
"Does that skin have any special properties?"
"Oh, yes! My advice to you is that, when your piece of the Moor is no longer needed, burn it at once."
I nodded, took a couple honey cakes from the bowl and hurried out the door.
The image of a sweet girl created in my head was so convincing that watching her flawless little hands weave strips of human skin into a garrote was just beyond my abilities.
With a shake of my head, I went up to the bedroom, but I couldn't just drink tea in peace. Elizabeth-Maria followed after me with a rag in one hand and a half-made rope in the other.