Master of Blood and Bone

by Craig Saunders

  Holland’s right hand was still pointing at the kid’s body when he felt the thick, heavy barrel of a shotgun against the back of his neck.

  Fuck.

  He stopped moving and dropped his gun. The shotgun was cold on his neck. He didn’t say anything.

  One thing being fast, one thing being smart. Being flippant when you’ve got the cold barrel of a gun against the flesh of your neck wouldn’t be smart at all.

  “Still got it, Holland,” said a woman behind him, the one holding the gun. “You can turn around whenever you like.”

  The gun retreated. Holland turned.

  The fat guy, Dave, wasn’t fat or Dave anymore. He was Jane.

  37

  Jane looked far better than she had as Dave, but then she could look however she pleased.

  At present, she was around seven, seven and a half feet tall. Stunning, iridescent eyes with flecks of madness, hair the color of gold and blood. She held a shotgun, an imperfect tool, ugly in her beautiful and terrible hands.

  The hammers were back. Both barrels were aimed very steadily at Holland’s face.

  “Thought you didn’t like guns.”

  Jane shrugged. The gun didn’t shift.

  “I don’t like them. I’m not allergic, Holland.”

  Shame, thought Holland.

  “If you’re going to kill me,” he said, “get on with it. I’m busy as it is, and I haven’t got all day to die.”

  Jane smiled.

  “Promised her I wouldn’t.”

  “Funny. Doesn’t feel quite like I’m on a promise,” said Holland.

  “I won’t kill you, Holland. Had a soft spot for her. Always did. But deal’s done, Holland. I won’t be needing your…services…any longer.”

  “New help?”

  “I don’t believe, Holland, my benevolence extends to exposition. I tried, I failed. You’re still quick. I suggest you gather up your gun and leave, Holland. Job’s done and dusted.”

  “Fired, huh?”

  Jane smiled, beautiful and ugly in one.

  “Replaced.” She nodded.

  Holland stooped, then holstered his warm gun. Wouldn’t do much good against a woman like Jane, either way. And no one, no one, is that fast.

  He had questions. Like what the two killers dead on the new carpet were. Like who she’d sent to get the book before him. Like how the guy in the council house had come by the book.

  She wasn’t going to answer any of them.

  Holland wasn’t going to waste his time asking. He’d already figured most of what he needed to, and that big fat gun was still peeking right in his face.

  He turned away, waiting for the pellets in his back.

  The gun tracked him to the door. Jane’s eyes never left his back.

  He didn’t turn.

  “Ank’s gone. You know?”

  “I know,” said Jane, smiling.

  Holland heard her smile and knew a deal had been done. He didn’t have to ask to know certain things. Jane was immense, powerful…but she wasn’t the smartest. Never had been.

  Holland knew, as he heard that smile in Jane’s reply, that Ank had been part of the deal, and with that knowledge came the certainty that he’d have to deal with Jane, too.

  One day, and soon.

  Holland nodded without turning as he stood in the door frame.

  “Last chance, Jane,” he said. The gun’s gaze felt heavy on his back.

  She understood.

  “My other face is coming out, Holland. Don’t be around when it does. Don’t.”

  Holland didn’t say anything as he walked away. They could threaten each other all day, but they couldn’t hurt each other. Getting into a pissing contest with a God wasn’t going to help Ank.

  But now Holland knew where Ank had gone and even a God wasn’t going to stop him from getting her back.

  38

  In the book, there was no time. There never seemed to be any daylight, only evening. No moonlight through the high windows. A breeze carried down. Cool. The temperature did not deviate, even, Ank discovered, when she stood next to a torch burning in the wall sconce. Curious, she reached out and flicked her hand into the flame.

  No pain.

  But there was pain, here, in the wizard’s world. It was entirely possible. He’d made sure of that.

  Why?

  Ank didn’t know. But she thought maybe she’d like to find out. In here, in this prison, this story, this tomb that had held the man for so long, there were answers. If she knew where to look.

  She did not.

  So far, she roamed. She never tired, nor hungered.

  But she did think.

  Would it help if I could gauge the passing of time? Is it the same as…outside?

  Ank shook her head.

  No.

  No, because there was nothing here. It was stuck. The book, the tale, the workings of the wizard’s remarkable and surely insane genius; it seemed, to Ank, to be broken.

  Almost as though there was no one to turn the page.

  This thought felt true.

  How had the wizard turned the page? Had he turned the pages? Had he roamed these alabaster halls for a hundred, a thousand years?

  If he had, it was no wonder the man was insane.

  Of course he was mad. He had to be. No one, no man, nor God, nor beast, could face the same thing, day in, day out. The remarkable would soon become the mundane. The solitude would become crushing, the silence so loud it would hurt a person’s ears. At first.

  Later? The breeze, the flickering torches, the endless corridor, the sand underfoot…insanity.

  “Insanity.”

  So, there is no way to tell the passage of time, Ank. No way.

  She’d been walking and walking and walking. Not once did Ank feel hungry, or tired. Not once did the sights around her divert from the simple truth. She began to look around, more eagerly, while she walked along the hall. There was always sand underfoot. The sand was cool, the breeze was cool.

  For a time, she counted windows, way above her head. Wondered if there was any way to climb those smooth, ancient-looking walls. Then, tiring of the speculation, walked on. She stepped over the petrified corpses of a basilisk and a manticore and remembered the terrible agony of his passage from the book, through her severed face, into her world.

  The fabled beasts behind, Ank wondered why there was no heat. She wondered why there was no deviation.

  The torch. The torch on the wall. I wonder…is there any heat?

  She reached out and put her hand to the flame.

  On the wall behind the torch, this time, she noticed something scrawled into the wall, hastily, with something sharp.

  She craned her head forward, nearing the flame that gave off no heat, and saw the first words she’d seen since entering the book. Words in her own hand.

  “Stop, Ank. You’ve been here before.”

  She reached out to feel the letters carved into the wall, and as she did so, she noticed she was still holding the tool with which she’d left herself the message.

  A stone tooth.

  39

  Ank stared at the scrawl. Stared at the stone tooth that she held, forgotten, in her right hand, and had no idea how long she had held it, or even when she had taken it.

  “Fuck,” she said.

  She looked back and saw something else scrawled below the first message that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  “It’s sharp enough, Ank. End it.”

  Cold inside now, she understood. She understood more than she wished.

  The wizard had made the book to fight back. Not to make him insane.

  No.

  He had created this place to keep him from going insane.

  Because all the time, however long he’d been lost in this awful place, the book had been trying to kill its creator. The book was the enemy.

  “I’m not the enemy,” Ank saw now, hastily cut into the plaster of the wall in huge, mad, letters.

  Shit. S
hit. Shit. The book’s trying to make me crazy.

  She didn’t look again and this time she forced herself to keep her thoughts to herself.

  The book’s trying to kill me. A fucking book. A psychopathic book?

  You’ve lost it, Ank. You’ve lost it.

  She felt herself scratching at her neck, like something had prickled her skin, and as she scratched she realized she still held the deadly tooth.

  She’d nearly cut her own throat.

  She threw it to the ground and walked on, faster. She looked over her shoulder to make sure nothing else was scrawled on the soft plaster of the wall and tripped over the petrified remains of the two beasts, locked in death forever.

  No…

  “Please…please…”

  She put her head in her hands and sobbed, and as she did so she saw the wounds on her wrists. A long gash, on her wrist.

  In the other hand, that deadly tooth.

  She threw it away, staring, horrified at her blood.

  It’s driving me insane. It’s trying to get me to kill myself…and it’s winning.

  It’s fucking winning.

  Ank stared in horror at the blood running from her wrist, dripping into the thirsty sand under her feet.

  Take control, Ank.

  Turn the page.

  “I’m not in fucking control! The book is!”

  In the sand at her feet, words appeared, as if drawn by an invisible finger.

  “Who are you talking to, Ank?”

  “Fuck you!”

  It wasn’t just a book. It was a nightmare. An entity. So, so much more than just a story.

  Turn the page, she thought, looking down at the bloody sand beneath her feet.

  Turn the fucking page!

  How do you get away from a nightmare? Get away from terrors in your own mind?

  Wake up. Wake up.

  Ank kicked the sand before more words could appear and break her and with her shaking finger wrote her words on the wall.

  “The book tried, many times, to kill Ank. It drove her to the brink. So near to winning, the book, a thing with no heart, soul, mind, felt no joy.”

  Ank wasn’t sure if she could finish the next sentence. Blood was pouring from the wound in her wrist. She held it above her head, to try to slow her own blood. Blood ran down her naked arm, across her shoulder, her chest.

  She fell, weak, to her knees.

  Her eyes drifted.

  Don’t sleep!

  She snapped her eyes open, and with the last of her strength, she wrote.

  “But the book did not know Ank’s true name, and as her blood ran onto the sand, and made letters on the walls of the book’s dark heart, the book wondered…how…the…story…ends.”

  Ank’s head fell to the sand with a dull thump.

  40

  Holland didn’t like driving, but he disliked walking more.

  He drove away from the comic shop and all the way across the city until he was at the edge of the park. He pulled his car to the side of the road beside the bin where he’d thrown the empty book.

  With a grunt, Holland heaved himself from the car, took his stick with him, and stood still. Looking around slowly and carefully.

  He could not afford to miss anything this time.

  The bin wasn’t there anymore. There was just the concrete base where the bin had been.

  “Oh, Ank.”

  He’d fucked up. He knew it.

  Of course the book wasn’t around any longer. Even if it had been in the bin, the bin would have been emptied.

  But the bin wasn’t there.

  Maybe…

  Don’t clutch at straws, Holland.

  Holland looked around. Took in the entire vista, turning slowly.

  Where are you, honey?

  She wasn’t there…but someone else was. At first, he didn’t see them, because of the traffic, because he’d been looking at the bin, and then the park.

  He hadn’t seen them because he hadn’t expected to see them, and because they were fresh. Not like ghosts, but like real people. Real fresh, real policemen.

  Like pictures on film. Crisp, squared away policemen. But wrong, now Holland let himself really look. They were wrong because the two policemen, standing in the street, confused, were being run over every couple of seconds by the passing traffic.

  Not run over. Run through.

  Dead cops.

  Holland almost grinned.

  41

  “Chaps,” said Holland, standing by the side of the road. The dead might be able to bear being hit by an endless stream of city traffic. He could not. Holland was special in many ways, but he couldn’t help the cops.

  Pain, he knew, didn’t survive death. But the memory of it could. The memory of agony could, sometimes, drive a soul insane. The two dead policemen didn’t seem to be suffering overly. Quick deaths, thankfully. The policemen weren’t bothered. A bit confused, maybe.

  One was trying to direct traffic.

  “Fucking asshole drove right though me!” he said.

  The other cop seemed a better bet. Holland strained to read the guy’s name tag, but it was a bright day and the cop was about ten yards away.

  “Excuse me, Sergeant?”

  The traffic director didn’t look round, but swore again as yet another car drove through him.

  That’s going to get tiresome, thought Holland. He wished he could help, but that wasn’t his job.

  Ank.

  Ank could’ve helped.

  Fuck.

  Holland tried not to dwell on her, but pulled out a cigarette instead. He lit the cigarette with a match and began to smoke as the ghost walked toward him.

  “Sir?”

  “Jones,” said Holland, seeing the name tag, finally. He blew his smoke into the warm air. It covered the stench of exhaust fumes, hung in the air. Really hot days aren’t the best for smoking, but Holland had been without a few hours now, and was beginning to sense a kind of crabbiness coming over him that he only ever got when he didn’t smoke for a long time.

  “Can I help you?” said the ghost.

  “Yes, Sergeant Jones.”

  “Well, then…”

  “Might sound a little odd…but you do know you’re dead, right?”

  Jones nodded. He didn’t seem sad, or burdened. Didn’t seem lost, even. Not really. Just like a man passing time, waiting to move over.

  Holland nodded, too. Thought about saying sorry, or giving his condolences, but it didn’t seem required. Everyone, he guessed, took to death in different ways. Some took it better than others, like some people laughed easier or slept better after shooting a man.

  Up close now, he could see a telltale hint of the cityscape through the copper.

  “Jones, you mind telling me what happened here?”

  “No, sir. No, I don’t. Funny thing. There was a hell of a mess, right in the street. Some black guy, naked as the day he was born, kind of spread across the road. Like he got hit by something big. I didn’t get to him, because this young lad with his cock hanging out…”

  Holland raised his eyebrows but didn’t interrupt.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Jones, fairly astute even though he was dead. “…weird. Anyway, he says something about this young girl he’s with. Inappropriate kind of thing, you know?”

  Holland nodded.

  “Either way, didn’t matter. Fucker walked up to me and snapped my fucking neck.”

  “Harsh,” said Holland.

  “I thought so,” agreed Jones. “Anyway, what are you? Some kind of medium or something?”

  “Not exactly,” said Holland. “Maybe a little. Jack of all trades, me. Used to be a cop myself, you know.”

  “True?”

  Holland nodded. “Detective.”

  “Good work,” said the ghost, smiling.

  Holland liked him. He ground out his cigarette under the heel of his bad leg.

  “Another weird question, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Jones. “I’m
not busy.” The ghost laughed, and so did Holland.

  “Did you see a book? Anywhere? Round here? Night you died…anything? It’s important, or I wouldn’t bother you with it…”

  Jones nodded. “Just so happens I did. Yes. I did.”

  “Jones…you’re a good man, I think.”

  “Don’t butter me up, Detective,” said Jones, with another laugh. An easy laugh, like a man who was comfortable being dead. Not so many were.

  Holland liked him a lot.

  “There’s a homeless man spends nights in the park, over on the west side, by the pavilion. You know it?”

  “I do,” said Holland. “And thank you. Good man yourself, Jones. You’ll do alright,” said Holland, and winked.

  Jones smiled, shrugged. “Beats paperwork,” he said. “Got a question of my own, boss.”

  “Fire away,” said Holland. He was itching to get to the homeless man, and hopefully the book, but he had time for Jones and Jones had nothing but time.

  “Are you after the book, or the man who killed me and my partner?”

  “Bit of both,” said Holland, truthfully.

  “What you going to do about the fella?”

  Holland’s face hardened. “Kill him, I should think.”

  Jones held out his hand. Holland took it. The hand passed through, but the gesture was solid.

  42

  Lucas P. Carter was enjoying Holland’s house a hell of a lot. It was a good house. Cool from the tiles on the floor, shuttered windows that kept the worst of the heat out. Midsummer on the English coast could be freezing cold or burning hot. Today was a hot day, and the wind sat still.

  But cool enough, even for a muscular, hairy man thinking about doing some killing.

  As soon as Carter arrived, he knew the house was empty. No car was a giveaway, but no sense of life. No beating heart within the little cottage, or outside, in the sweltering garage.

  A hint of decay from the garage that tickled Carter’s nose. He wrenched the locked, concertinaed door upward and waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom before heading in.

  A few garage things on metal shelves that lined the walls—paints, deicer for the winter, a couple of heavy tools. Jars and tins with nails, screws, washers. A broken vacuum, the kind that plugs into the cigarette lighter on a car. There was a dead cat on a table in the center of the garage, drawing flies.