The Heartless (The Sublime Electricity Book #2)

by Pavel Kornev

  Run!

  I took a step back, jumped into the hallway and tore into the entryway. With the corner of my eye, I caught a blurry motion in the doors of the library. I spun in place, throwing up my pistol and suddenly, not really comprehending how, found myself on the floor.

  My head was spinning. Everything before my eyes was swimming, and the Cerberus lying not far from my outstretched hand looked like nothing more than a blurry dot. Not able to feel my own body, I tried to reach for it, but couldn't. Just then, a pair of lacquered ankle-boots came into my field of view, covered in blotches of dried mud.

  The uninvited guest slid my pistol away with a careless movement of his foot and said calmly:

  "You're now experiencing a weak semblance of a stroke, Viscount. Nothing to worry about. Yet."

  I tried to get up, but the pain shooting from the left side of my chest was so forceful that all I could do was collapse back onto the floor and limply press my cheek to the cold parquet.

  "And that heart," the voice repeated, still cracking like an old man's. "The heart is a surprising muscle, I can tell you that! It pumps blood for days on end with no break, day in, day out, month after month. A lifetime. It gets tired, of course. And some have natural defects. Incurable even, like her highness’s."

  "Go to hell!" I exhaled, trying to get up on all fours, but my left arm just gave out, and I was turned over onto my back with a careless poke of his shoe.

  "The heart grows tired, Viscount," the old man towering over me repeated, gray-haired and wrinkled. "Do you not think yours might have already run its course?"

  I looked at the illustrious gentleman's colorless eyes and shook my head.

  "That's right!" he laughed. "That's just my tricks, my talent. Viscount, one small clot is enough to paralyze you until the end of the day, so I beg of you – don't do anything stupid."

  The pain started to gradually recede. My heart stopped skipping beats. My ability to move my arms and legs came back.

  I crawled away from the illustrious gentleman, leaning my back against the wall and asking, not especially careful in my expressions:

  "What the devil do you want? The box? Well, I don't have it!"

  "Viscount, don't play games with me. It's rather a bad idea," the old man demanded. I recognized him as one of the men who had tied me up to the electric chair. "And don't hope for the manor's curse to protect you. The Diabolic Plague can’t hurt me."

  "What do you want?" I repeated.

  "The book!"

  "What book are you talking about?"

  I felt like my heart was in a steel vice. The pain left me dumbfounded and, for a moment, I simply lost control over my own body. That gave the illustrious man enough time to bow down over me, rifle through my pockets and take the torn photograph.

  "I need the book this girl is holding," the old man announced.

  "That is my mother," I sighed hoarsely.

  "All the worse for you, Viscount," the old man frowned. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have come here."

  "What do you need the book for?"

  "You're in no position to be asking questions."

  "But, all the same?"

  The old man removed his jacket and hung it on the door handle; pulled massive golden cuff links from his expensive dress shirt and started unhurriedly rolling back the sleeves.

  "Give me the book," he suggested, "and I'll spare your girlfriend's life."

  "Not mine?"

  "Oh no! The only way for your life to be saved, is if you act stubborn. Unfortunately for you, though, a blood vessel will burst in your head, and you will be left paralyzed to spend the rest of your days in a beggar’s hospital. I'll even come by once or twice a week to ask you if you want to end your suffering. In exchange for the book, naturally. So, why complicate things?"

  "A curious perspective," I muttered. "Am I to assume you've already searched the library?"

  "I didn't find anything that looked right," the illustrious man admitted. "Where is it?"

  I grabbed the doorjamb, and exerted a good bit of effort getting to my feet before I peeked into the library. There was not a single book on the shelves. They were all lying on the floor, arranged into uneven stacks.

  "You checked them all?" I asked, guessing how exactly the illustrious gentleman had gone about the search knowing nothing at all about the book he intended to find.

  "Yes," confirmed the old man.

  "Then, let's go!" I called to him, stepping away from the wall. The old man took a deft step back.

  "Drop the knife!" he demanded.

  I cursed out silently, took out my titanium blade and threw it on the floor.

  "After you!" the illustrious man ordered, removing his jacket from the door handle. "And no stupid stuff!"

  We got over to the stairs, went up to the third floor, and I suffered another heart attack in the hallway. While I endured the convulsions, the old man went first into the bedroom, looked around and went back.

  "It isn't here!" he said, accusing me of lying with unhidden rage. "There aren't any books in this room at all!"

  "Well, of course there aren't!" I rasped out, getting up from my knees. "This is where I keep my magnifying glass, idiot!"

  "And what of it?"

  "For want of money," I winced, massaging my chest with my hand, "I had to sell off parts of my library to booksellers. Who got which book is something only I remember. So, be a bit more careful with your talent. And, if you think it will be enough to simply find out the name, let me tell you something – different editions of the same book may not be the exact same. And the pagination is certain to be different!"

  The old man's transparent, light eyes started glowing with a fell fire, but he held back from another burst of torture and just pointed at the door:

  "Please go!"

  I went into the bedroom, sat at the desk and tried to open its top drawer, but my arm suddenly went slack like a limp lash. The old man himself opened it, took out the magnifying glass and set about taking a closer look at the photo.

  "I can't make out a thing!" he announced.

  "Old age is no blessing," I snorted back.

  "Not everyone lives to see it," the illustrious man parried.

  The allusion was as transparent as they come. I demanded:

  "Give it to me."

  I took the photo and magnifier, looked close and suddenly, by some inspiration, guessed what book my mom had been holding in her hands.

  I didn't hesitate, even for a moment. I quickly stuck the yellowed photo in my mouth and started chewing, trying to tear up the thick paper with my teeth, or better yet swallow it, leaving the illustrious man playing the fool.

  But I couldn't. My eyes clouded over, I slid off the chair and thudded onto the floor. The old man took a seat next to me and, without particular ceremony, pried open my jaw with the blade of a pen knife. After removing the bespittled wad from my mouth, he smoothed it out and threw it with annoyance into the far corner.

  "Why did you do that, Viscount?" the illustrious man asked, vexed and pacing the room nervously.

  My stun slightly retreated, and I rasped out:

  "You'll never figure it out without me..."

  "Oh, come off it!" he replied dismissively. "You didn't even have the whole number!" And he added with unhidden superiority: "But I do!"

  I tore my head from the floor, looked closely and discovered with unhidden surprise that the illustrious gentleman had somehow acquired a copy not only of my photo, but also of the piece my uncle had torn off.

  "You don't have the book!" I then squeezed out, trying to get up from the floor.

  "Is that so?" the old man snorted, picking up the copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the leprechaun had left on the chair. "It seems to me I have everything I need."

  The old man took a seat in the armchair, laid both photographs on the wide armrest and started leafing through my mother's favorite book, writing down something in his notebook as he did.

  "You are a very self-
assured young man, Viscount," he muttered to himself in passing, "you clearly took after your grandfather. Emile was known for his flighty nature. His head was always in the clouds, always scheming. He made a good foil to his brother, but was worth nothing on his own. He was an unremarkable personage inclined toward poorly-thought-out adventurism."

  I carefully filled my lungs with air and allowed myself an uncomfortable question:

  "Then why are you all so concerned with the secrets of this supposed non-entity?"

  "Non-entity? Nothing of the sort," the old man objected. "He was a decent person in his own way. The life of the party, and a favorite with the ladies. He wasn't talentless. He was just short-sighted. He was a masterful card player, but he never knew how to think out his play too far in advance. And that was his ruin."

  "He did a great job hiding his secret, then."

  "This isn't his secret!" the illustrious man suddenly barked back. "This is our secret. Our shared secret! Emile blackmailed us, pulled us into his worthless intrigues, and put us in the line of fire! We have lived all the last years with an ax hanging over our necks, but now is when it all ends! Now is when it all ends!"

  It all ends? I was afraid that might have been true.

  What a shame. Not even one drop of me wanted to die.

  "He must have had you by the nuts," I laughed, wanting to at least somewhat distract the illustrious man and draw out my time, but he suddenly shot up from the chair and stared at the writing in his notebook in confusion.

  "This cannot be!" he whispered, now white as chalk. "This simply cannot be! Unfathomable!"

  The old man walked over to the table, poured himself some water from the decanter, drank it and paced the room, rubbing his sweaty face with a kerchief.

  "This cannot be!" the illustrious man insisted stubbornly, visibly aging before my very eyes. "Damned half-wit!" he cursed out, rifling through the pockets of the jacket left on the bed. He got a box of matches from it and started the photo on fire. "Burn in hell, Emile! Burn in hell!"

  The gaze of the illustrious man's colorless eyes fixated on me and, not wanting to go out on my knees, I got up from the floor and leaned heavily on the back of the chair, not strong enough to take a single step. The old man held his empty hand out with an unpleasant smile and balled it up into a fist. I shuddered, expecting trenchant pain, but no – this time, it came on slowly, letting me feel every little prick, every spark.

  "Emile orchestrated all this for nothing," the illustrious man exhaled. He now looked just a little better than me.

  And I looked obviously unwell. My eyes grew dark. My legs started giving out, and I had to grab onto the back of the chair in order not to fall back down onto all fours. The figure of the leprechaun appeared in the doorway. He looked at me with incomprehension, made a "screw loose" gesture and hid from view.

  "The heart," stated the old man. "Your heart is no longer beating, Viscount."

  And silence came over the room. All sounds died out. The patter of rain on the roof, the rolling thunder, the rustling of branches on the blinds and the shuddering of the window panes.

  The sounds died out but, looking at the illustrious man's uncomprehending face, I suddenly realized that the strange flood of silence had also caught him.

  "Isn't your heart wearing out, too?" I whispered out and in one, perhaps my last, breath said: "Just look at yourself – pale, sweaty, panting, elevated heart rate. Are you afraid of dying from a heart attack? Dying before you get what you're after?"

  The old man was afraid. I didn't even have to kindle his fear with my talent in earnest. Just his very deep disappointment was enough. The illustrious man fell to his knees, then slowly moved forward and collapsed face-first on the floor.

  A new convulsion shook through me. My chest was pierced with pain. Unlike the earlier attacks, I got the sensation that my heart was being turned inside out and, all the same, after an unthinkably long pause, it started beating again, sending blood coursing through my veins.

  But the sounds of the surrounding world still hadn't returned. I could only make out muffled strikes from outside and a strange crackling.

  I looked out the window and immediately decided I was going insane. There were black shadows climbing over the fence one after the other.

  I saw a silent flash of lightning, breaking up the darkness of the night and, only then was I able to make out the intruders. From head to toe, their unnaturally gaunt bodies were wrapped tightly in blackened bandages.

  Mummies, seriously?!

  I couldn't be sure, but I had a pretty good idea why these ghastly restless souls had appeared at my estate.

  Curses! Lazarus had come for my soul!

  A banging on the front door forced me to cast off my consternation. By that time, the mummies running from the fence had already bounded through the dead garden and were beginning to climb up the walls, but the windows of the first floor were affixed with iron grates, and the second floor had been empty for many years, the windows shuttered behind sturdy blinds.

  Not losing time, I slammed the blinds shut and started running toward the front door. I ran up to the stairs and almost fell down them after running into the leprechaun as he dragged a weighty box of some kind up to the attic. I jumped past, then realized that the pipsqueak had been hauling the hand-grenade box from the carriage-house. But I didn't go after him, just ran down to the first floor.

  Strange as it may seem, Theodor had already come back around and was wiping off his dusty frock with incomprehension.

  "Viscount?" he stuttered at my appearance.

  "Get your gun!" I snapped. "We’re under attack!"

  I then jumped into the entryway, braced a cupboard against the door, grabbed a canvas bag of incendiary grenades and ran into the kitchen. Elizabeth-Maria was convulsing on the floor as before; I bent down next to her and tried to find some hidden fear to stoke in the girl's mind. I knew she had a fear of helplessness and being completely dependent on another's will, for example.

  Then, I simply laid into her with a slap to the cheek straight from the shoulder.

  "Hey, wake up! Wake up!"

  Elizabeth-Maria winced several times, and her transparent watery eyes lit up with a dim glow.

  I commanded:

  "Follow me!" And ran into the carriage-house through the door from inside the house.

  "What is happening?" the girl shouted, having chased me into the hallway. "What games are you playing?!"

  "There's been an attack!" I replied, throwing open the box containing the hand-held Madsen machine-gun, then loading the weighty, cumbersome object on my shoulder. "Don't forget rounds! And pistols!"

  "Why the devil do we need all that?" Elizabeth-Maria snarled.

  "Faster!"

  Elizabeth-Maria's eyes flickered in rage, but she didn't smart off. She stuck both of the pre-loaded Mausers into the ammo-bag next to the machine-gun magazines, and grabbed the semi-automatic carbine with fixed magazine.

  "Are you satisfied?"

  "Run!"

  We went back in the house and, just then, somewhere up above, heard the sound of glass breaking and a muted crashing.

  "The blinds!" I gasped, having just realized that my bedroom wasn't the only occupied area on the third floor – Elizabeth-Maria slept there as well. "Did you close your blinds?"

  "Why on earth would I have done that?" the girl asked in surprise.

  "Devilry!" The mummies were in the house. My whole defense plan was scuttled on the rocks!

  The pounding at the front door was growing sharper and clearer, but now, there was a threat coming at us from the upper floors as well.

  "To the guest room!" I decided and ran down the hallway, hunching under the weight of the hand-held machine gun.

  As I ran, I simply didn't notice a black figure. It appeared from out of nowhere, wrapped in dark bandages and holding its unnaturally gaunt arms in front of itself. But before it got to me, it was sent flying backward with its head blown off. Elizabeth-Maria had hit
it with the semi-automatic carbine with such force that the stock broke to pieces. Ruddy blood spattered on the walls, and the hallway filled with the smell of rotten meat.

  A second mummy jumped past its defeated comrade and ran at the girl, who'd lost her balance after the powerful bash. But the succubus managed to stay standing and slammed the barrel of the rifle into the puffy eye of the undead creature with a blistering lunge. And when the restless soul grabbed the foregrip with both hands, it didn't move the weapon away, it instead just pulled the trigger.

  A muffled shot rang out, and the back of the mummy's head flew off.

  "Faster!" I hurried the girl on, jumping over the corpse with a busted head and hurrying into the guest room. Elizabeth-Maria threw away the ruined carbine and ran after me.

  A third mummy charged at us from the stairs just as a deafening shot blasted out from the side hallway. The buckshot knocked the horrifying creature off its feet; it was still down on all fours when Theodor came right up close, aimed the double-barreled hunting shotgun at its bandaged face and pulled the trigger. The undead man's head was torn to pieces. Meanwhile, my butler cracked the hunting shotgun in two and took a pair of new shells from his frock pocket, as if he were just hunting woodcocks.

  "Theodor!" I snapped. "Follow me!"

  I jumped into the guest room, laid out the tripod and set the machine gun near the door. From there, I had a line of fire on the whole entryway and hallway leading into it. I took the ammo bag from Elizabeth-Maria and popped a mag into the gun with trembling hands.

  "Hold the second door!" I ordered my companions.

  The girl quickly took the saber down from the wall, unfazed as if she were death itself. My butler was standing opposite the passage with his gun in his hands. I heard quick footsteps. Theodor braced the stock of his double-barrel on his shoulder and shot once, twice, then quickly stepped aside for the succubus.

  The mummy that ran in impaled itself on the saber, losing all its speed at once. Another strike, this time relaxed and from the side, easily split its head wide open.

  Soon after, our head start lost all significance; the front door flew off its hinges, and an avalanche of black figures flooded into the room. By then, an extra magazine already loaded, I was sitting spread-eagled behind the machine gun. I immediately opened fire in distinct, two-to-three-bullet bursts.