Master of Blood and Bone

by Craig Saunders

  Carter walked around the cat and the table, checking out Holland’s stuff, largely ignoring the cat.

  Plenty of stuff a middle-aged man would keep in a garage. And some stuff he wouldn’t.

  Old stuff, in a box, and a bike. A small bike, like a kid’s, with pink tassels on one side of the handlebars but not the other. Slightly rusted, without stabilizers. Probably old, he figured. A girl’s CD player, a broken MP3 player with a crack in the casing. Kid things. Girl things.

  Carter wrenched the door back down. It didn’t look, at a glance, like he’d broken it.

  Good enough.

  With his elbow, he smashed a pane on the kitchen window, which looked out toward the bright sea a few hundred yards to the north. He reached through, found no key in the lock, but a small knob beside the handle, which he twisted, allowing him to push the handle down and the door open.

  He walked through the house to the front door and saw no key there, either. People often leave keys in the lock when they’re indoors. Absence of keys didn’t mean no one was home, but it added to the feeling of emptiness.

  Carter walked around to the utility room and looked at the lock that led out to the garage. No key. He’d been in the garage, though, and didn’t need to go back.

  On the table in the kitchen was a glass of water that felt warm and tasted stale, and an ashtray overflowing with butts. Carter picked one up, sniffed it and looked at the brand, then put it down again.

  On a small coffee table in the living room was another ashtray and an empty whiskey tumbler.

  Carter checked the rest of the house.

  A big double bed, made. Tidy, clean. Holland’s room.

  Next to that, a girl’s bedroom. Not a typical girl, either. No posters. One piece of art that was a bit shit, to Carter’s untrained eye, hung on the wall. Plenty of shelves, though, mostly holding books. Books on Latin and Greek, philosophy, mathematics.

  Brainy kid, for sure, and definitely a girl.

  So Holland had a girl with him?

  No, thought Carter. Not just a girl. A teenager, he thought, in his limited experience, but not staying, like a niece might.

  She lived here. It was her house as much as Holland’s.

  He found the washing basket in the bathroom and took a long look at the things in there. Not just Holland’s grubby clothes, but a girl’s, too. He pulled some red underwear out and checked the size. Size 10. Not a little kid. Sniffed it.

  He smelled a woman there, in the underwear. On the cusp.

  He put the underwear down and roamed, again.

  As Carter stalked through the small cottage, his muscles tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed. Like an animal, prowling.

  Holland wasn’t there, and neither was the girl.

  Where the fuck was she? Who was she?

  He knew of Holland…not the girl. Never knew Holland had a girl…a daughter?

  Carter looked everywhere, finding nothing, until he finally got hungry and took his meal from the bag he carried on his broad back. Grilled chicken, plain, and plenty of it.

  He used the glass on the table for some fresh water from the tap. Drank water, ate some chicken.

  Carter figured he could run around looking for Holland. Or he could do the man a favor and wait right here. Maybe the girl would turn up, too.

  Carter hoped so, he really did. As he sat at Holland’s kitchen table, he ate chicken and drank water and remembered how the girl smelled. She smelled good.

  43

  Sometimes being a killer was about having fast hands, about movement and speed.

  Sometimes it was about sitting on your ass and waiting.

  While Carter sat in Holland’s house, waiting for Holland to come back, Holland sat on a bench in a park. He was hunched and scruffy, looking a little like a homeless person himself. His bench faced the pavilion, a white wooden construction at one edge of the park, where sometimes bands played, like on Fireworks night, or near Christmas, when it might be a bunch of kids singing carols, rather than a band.

  Holland was good at sitting on his ass. He kind of liked it.

  It was warm. He’d sat around for longer and been colder.

  He had a cigarette on the go, a gun by his side, his stick by his weak leg.

  Only thing he was missing was a drink. Coffee, tea, beer, whiskey, he didn’t really care. He was thirsty. Hungry, too, but that, oddly, wasn’t bothering him so much.

  Either way, if the homeless guy who might have the book was going to turn up, he didn’t want to miss him. He could have walked five minutes in most directions and got a drink, come back, missed ten minutes.

  He wasn’t going to lose his daughter for the sake of ten minutes’ worth of being a twat. Wasn’t going to happen. He’d already been a twat this week, he figured.

  Blind, too. Walked into a meeting with Jane and nearly died. Lost his daughter because he’d left a deadly book on the kitchen table. Been shuffled around like a rookie to get the book. Missed the bigger game.

  Jane had somehow traded Ank for the wizard.

  Holland couldn’t see the whole of it, but he knew Jane had wanted the book, because she’d sent him to get it…but as fucking backup. He’d been her second string on this job, which stung, though it shouldn’t.

  The guy who tore the council house man to pieces had been her go-to guy. No doubt in Holland’s mind.

  How did the council house guy come by the book and who was he? Holland didn’t think he’d ever find out…not unless Jane told him. And she wouldn’t. Either way, the guy had come by the book, he was dead. Simple story, the end.

  The rest was the problem. The soul-eater, the sadistic fucker who’d destroyed the man for the book. Jane. A wizard…a wizard who’d been in the book that had…

  Taken Ank?

  Why would he think that?

  Because the book was empty…

  The wizard was out.

  Holland sighed and lit another cigarette, wondering if the wizard in the book was out, where the fuck was he?

  As he sat in the quiet park, waiting for sundown, he thought and tried to see the shape of the thing before him. Jane, a God herself. A powerful wizard. A killer who tore a man to pieces and destroyed him so completely that his soul, too, was devoured.

  Ank, in a book.

  Holland sighed. Twilight came and he lit yet another cigarette, flicking ash on the small mountain of cigarette butts on the floor by his feet.

  He really was thirsty.

  “Ank,” he said, apropos of nothing. Maybe just to hear his voice, to hear her name.

  You’re a fucking knob, Holland, he told himself.

  Self-loathing wasn’t going to help, though. Yes, he’d screwed it up. But screwups could sometimes be made right.

  He caught movement ahead, near the pavilion. Darkness was rising and the streetlights of the city barely pierced the shadows in the park. The trees held back the light.

  The shuffling thing moved right along, until it, too, sat on a bench. Maybe fifty feet from Holland.

  Was it him? Did he have the book? Was it just someone drunk and tired, heading to the park to sit and wait on the sun?

  Holland didn’t know, but he’d sat long enough. Now it was time to fix whatever he could and hope he ended up with all the right pieces.

  44

  Holland clomped across the park to the bench with the shuffling shape atop. He made plenty of noise—Holland could move quickly, quietly, if he really wanted to. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to scare the man on the bench—a homeless man, for sure. Holland wasn’t sure if it was the homeless man. Wouldn’t know until he asked, he guessed.

  “Evening, fella,” he said by way of introduction.

  The old man looked at Holland through one tired eye, dismissed him and turned around.

  Fuck, is rude catching today?

  Then he remembered Jones, the ghost across the way. That was how you were a cop. A man. Not by getting ass ache just because a homeless guy gives you the cold shoulder
.

  “Sir,” said Holland, trying again. “I’ve been told you have a book I’m looking for.”

  “I’m not a fucking bookshop, fatty,” said the old man.

  Fuck it, thought Holland. I tried.

  “Well, you’re an ornery old bastard, eh?”

  The old man turned back and looked at Holland again.

  “Trying to sleep, buddy.”

  Holland sighed and as he did so he caught a whiff of the old man. The man stank like hell itself.

  “You got the book or not?”

  “I’ve got a book. It’s handy. Figure I’ll keep a diary.” The old man laughed at his own joke.

  “What’ll you take for it?”

  “Blowjob?”

  “Get fucked.”

  The old man laughed at Holland again.

  Holland drew out the remainder of his cigarettes. Held them in one hand and his gun with the other.

  The old man’s eyes tracked from gun to cigarettes and back again.

  “Trade you,” said Holland. “Your choice which.”

  Old man wasn’t crazy. Ornery, yes, but he wasn’t crazy or stupid.

  He rustled inside his big dirty coat and pulled out a book.

  The book.

  “Cigarettes?”

  Holland holstered the gun, and reached out and took the book.

  Holland seriously considered holding out, because the old bastard was a pain in the ass. But he gave him the pack.

  “Ain’t got a lighter!” the old man called to Holland’s back as he strode back toward his car. His stick hit the path through the park with increased urgency this time, the weight of the book in his jacket pocket.

  “Couple of twigs and a Cub Scout should do the trick,” called back Holland.

  The old homeless guy swore at Holland, but by then Holland was getting into his car, and twenty seconds later he was gone.

  45

  The stolen police helicopter was still but for the rotors, which still whirled at idle speed. The wizard sat beneath the sun while all around him wheat filled the air, stalks and seeds, and the dry earth-dust of the sun-baked field. The noise of the rotors, and that of the engine, was immense.

  The wizard, in a handsome young man’s body, watched the rotors spin.

  “Jump,” said the wizard, and the pilot jumped. He was a short man, and the rotors were high off the ground. The game was tiresome, and the wizard was bored. He considered just twisting the man’s head loose. But he was mildly interested to see just how much damage those long, spinning blades might do.

  The book had been a challenge. It had held his interest for millennia.

  This world…so far?

  The wizard wondered. It was new. New things, shiny things, fast things.

  Different people, different clothes, different buildings.

  He was curious…but he wasn’t sold.

  All the shiny things, he thought, and still they needed this field. Wheat. Simple wheat, growing from the earth.

  “Oh, just stand still,” he told his slave, who continued to jump toward the rotors he’d never reach.

  “Who rules this land, now? Who rules?”

  The pilot was gone. Far, far gone. He merely stared back at the wizard, grinning.

  “You’re just a dribbling idiot, aren’t you, slave?”

  The pilot nodded, eager enough to please.

  “Tell you what, I’ll give you a hand.”

  The wizard pushed himself up, easy enough in his young body, and strode beneath the rotors. He made a stirrup of his hands for the pilot’s foot.

  “There, push up from there. Get a bit of height.”

  The pilot put his foot in, and jumped, as the wizard pushed.

  Instant blood rain.

  The wizard, painted with blood, grinned and danced for a few moments in the bloody mist. When he stopped, there was a man watching him. The man had a dog, and a gun. Shotgun, the wizard trawled from the young man’s mind.

  Not a warrior, though, or a soldier, he understood. The man was just a farmer. The dog was a springer spaniel. The wizard had never seen such a pointless dog. The farmer, too, overweight, florid in the face. How strange, he thought, this world that gave farmers weapons and bred tiny, weak dogs.

  “Afternoon,” said the wizard, amiably enough. He wasn’t worried about the farmer, or the gun, or the dog.

  The blood on his clothes and skin was already drying up in the heat of the sun.

  Even the sun wasn’t right, he realized. It was less bright, its heat seemingly weaker than he remembered. The air was dirtier and the sky too pale.

  Looking at the farmer, he thought the people of the world had lost something, too.

  Fear. An edge. That’s what they had lost.

  They’re comfortable, he thought. But not for much longer.

  “Shoot the dog, Mr. Farmer,” said the wizard, his teeth and eyes the only patches of white left on him. “Shoot the dog.”

  The dog barked.

  “I don’t think I should do that,” said the farmer.

  “I’m telling you to, though, so go ahead and do it. Good man.”

  The farmer shook his head. “You’re soft in the head, young fella.”

  The wizard laughed and twirled. “Soft? You? Fat, dying, funny shoes, shit dog?”

  “They’re Wellingtons. And it’s not my dog.”

  “Fuck you! Fuck you, my good man! Shoot, shoot, shoot!”

  “Well, if you say so,” said the farmer with a shrug, and blew a hole right through the center of the wizard.

  46

  “Oh, you cunt,” said the wizard, but his words spat out blood, too. He looked at the wound, a gaping hole through his chest. Bone, blood, bits of lung and liver and spine.

  “Bet that tickles,” said the farmer.

  The wizard frowned at the mess of his chest, then he allowed his black blood to flow. He filled in his torn flesh and bone with his will.

  “Before you go getting all shirty,” said the farmer, “there’s someone I think you might like to meet…”

  The wizard couldn’t even think straight, or do much of anything but stare, shocked, at the farmer and the dog and the smoking gun. Never had anyone made such a fool of him…

  Anger rose within, and with it, the wizard’s power.

  Until the farmer wrong-footed the wizard yet again when he tossed the gun at the wizard’s feet.

  “Go on. Have a go. I’ve never shot anyone before. It’s fun. Try it.”

  For an instant, the wizard felt as though he was in the book again, playing its games, trying to survive its tricks and traps.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “Have a go,” said the farmer. “I won’t offer again.”

  The wizard looked up at the farmer, down at the gun. He picked up the gun, figured out how to fire and fired without hesitation.

  The farmer didn’t move. Didn’t blink, flinch, duck. The pellets from the gun stopped in the air. The farmer brushed them from before him, as though he were waving away nothing more than a few flies.

  The dog barked happily and ran around the farmer’s feet.

  “Who are you?”

  “No gun ever made could hurt me,” said the farmer. As he walked toward the wizard, the farmer seemed to grow. “No gun, no blade.”

  “Who the fuck are you!?” The wizard was cold, even in the burning sun. He felt dirty and childish, suddenly, and he didn’t like it. Confused, too, because the farmer was like him…but now…something else, too. Growing…changing, as he neared. In less than a couple of seconds, the round, amiable farmer wasn’t there before the wizard, but a towering, giant woman. Stunningly beautiful, wild insanity within her terrible eyes.

  “You’re not alone,” said the woman. She smiled, but the smile was cold, frightening.

  Why am I afraid? Farmer, woman, what does it matter?

  Strike her down!

  The wizard longed to rear up against the woman, strike, but he could not. He was nothing. Nothing.
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  “I got you out for a reason.”

  His mind, frantic, searched for her meaning, this giant creature that now towered over him.

  God…she’s huge!

  “You got me out of my prison?”

  She nodded. “I have need of you. Your kind. There’s a war coming. I need soldiers and men of wit to lead them…are you one such man?”

  “Who are you?”

  “A war coming, oh yes. Gods and magic, man and machine…the war, brother. Do you understand? I want you…I will raise you up. You will serve me and we will do battle, glorious battle. War like it was of old…friend.”

  “WHO ARE YOU!”

  “Don’t you know? Has it been so long? Perhaps you remember my other face better…”

  Jane kneeled before the wizard, her immense and lovely face inches before his.

  “Would you like to see it?”

  Before the wizard could say no, Jane turned.

  As she turned, he saw her other visage. A large head hidden within a frightful metal mask. Eyes hidden, deep within, that blazed with rage and cunning. No longer a woman, but a man built for war in days before man’s ascension.

  “Look upon me, wizard. Look upon Janus. I am the master of war, and you will serve and serve well.

  The wizard tried to hold that stare, tried to show that he was unafraid. But still he turned his eyes from the awful sight of Janus, the face of war.

  He fell to his knees, but did not look again.

  “Janus…Lord…I thought…I thought I was alone…but you are beautiful…beautiful…my lord.”

  “Rise, Sulayman. Rise and be mine. Be mine, Solomon, friend of Scheherazade, foil of Asmodeus, builder of temples, fucker of virgins! Rise, be mine. Belong to me and I will tell you the future.”

  Janus laughed as the wizard knelt before him. His laugh was a great booming thing. His war mask and helm rocked with the force of it.