But two seconds was all Holland needed. He started backing away, while Janus took his sweet time thinking.
“You shot the dog?” he said eventually. “You’re crazy, Holland. You think that’s going to put me off? It’s not even my dog.”
“I know that, Janus.”
Holland was walking backward, happy enough to talk…anything to keep Janus busy for a few moments longer…
Walking, talking, and trying to get out of the way. For when Janus fell.
“I know it’s not your dog, Janus, because unlike you, I don’t have my head up my ass.”
“Explain.”
“Don’t need to,” said Holland. “What was it you said, while you tried to have me killed? ‘I don’t believe, Holland, my benevolence extends to exposition’? Well, mine doesn’t, either. I could waste time talking, but really, I don’t need to. Can’t be arsed, frankly. I just need to get back a bit.”
“Holland…”
“You thought she’d let you do this, Janus? Try to kill me? Mess with her daughter? I’ll be honest, Janus—I’m a bit grumpy about the whole thing…but her? You think I’m grumpy about it? She’s my wife, you dumb fucking tinhead! She’s Ank’s mother!”
Understanding was beginning to dawn in Janus’ hollow eyes.
“No…”
“Yeah. I’m a bastard, Janus. You should’ve known.”
Janus turned as the dead dog growled.
That’s a very angry growl, thought Holland.
“Holland…don’t you want to know why I wanted Ank? What she is?”
Holland was kind of curious…cool, in a way, too, to hear Janus’ voice, his uncertainty…but not enough to let Janus talk.
I could do with getting away. About now…knee’s just about up to a little run, I think…I hope…
“Nope,” he said.
Run?
He ran. Away from Janus, passing Ank, standing in the midst of a slaughter. Solomon and Asmodeus were gone. There was a fair mess in the snow after the demon took his revenge.
“Ank…”
His daughter joined him, falling in by his side, keeping pace easily.
“You shot the dog?” said Ank, breathing easy enough as she ran beside Holland.
“Ank…run…shut…up…and run.”
Holland wasn’t built for running. He was still heavy, still unfit, still had a shit knee…but he was having a damn good go, because the growling of the dog wasn’t pain…
“Holland!” Janus, bellowing, but not as loud as the dog…
The growling was joined by another dog’s deep voice, then a third.
Holland risked glancing back, and saw Janus pull a giant, rough-hammered sword from a scabbard on his back. He swung it at the dog.
The dog wasn’t dead anymore, and it certainly wasn’t a spaniel…
It leapt and took Janus’ sword arm in its immense maw. Janus rained blows with his free hand on the dog’s flank, until the dog’s second head caught the war-God’s fist between its teeth and bit down.
Janus screamed in rage, impotent against Cerberus’ might…right up until Cerberus’ third mouth clamped tight around his head and tore his mask and most of his face free from his skull.
Always something bigger, thought Holland. Might be a man with a quicker gun, a God with more power, and it might just be a great big fucking three-headed dog…and if the guard dog of the gates of Hades itself wasn’t up to the job, wasn’t much that was.
Cerberus, it seemed, was doing just fine.
87
Cerberus tore Janus to pieces. It wasn’t frenzied, like you might expect. More…ordered. The dog took it slow, too. Most dogs attack in a frenzy. They eat in a frenzy. It’s just dogs.
Cerberus wasn’t exactly a normal dog, though.
There’s something for the grandkids, thought Holland. He watched, his head cocked to one side. Interested, rather than repulsed.
Not every day you get to see Cerberus eating Janus. Kind of thing you had to watch.
Cerberus dismantled the God, using tooth and claw, pulling the flesh from the armor. The armor went to one side. The flesh was torn apart between the three heads, then, swallowed.
“This is kind of…well…”
“Yeah,” said Holland, nodding. He agreed. It was.
“How long since you knew it’d play out like this?”
Holland looked at Ank, surprised by the question.
“What? You think I knew this was coming?”
Ank laughed. “Don’t give me that, Holland. I know you. A long time now.”
Holland shook his head. “Wasn’t like that, Ank. Not this time. First I knew this might be on the cards was when I saw the dog. Even then, I wasn’t sure.”
Cerberus had largely eaten the flesh, the organs. Now he’d begun to snap the God’s bones between his teeth.
“You’re telling me this was all news to you?”
“I can’t see the future, Ank. I’m just a mortal.”
Ank looked at Holland, suspicion in her black eyes.
“Sometimes I wonder…Dad. Sometimes I wonder.”
Holland shrugged. He knew what he was, well enough. Just a man who was good with Death, nothing more.
He was so fascinated, watching Cerberus eat a God, that he’d forgotten the pistol in his hand. Damn thing was frozen against his gloves. His fist was tight and sore and he couldn’t feel his hands, either of them. He just kind of flapped his hand around, until he finally managed to fling it loose, tumbling, into the snow.
He wasn’t just cold, he realized. He was shutting down. So cold the cold had stopped hurting anymore.
Freezing to death, he thought. Dead anyway…so full of radiation I’ll glow when dark comes…I think I’d rather go numb.
He smiled at Ank, his daughter watching him with a kind of suspicious look, but a kind of awe, too.
Pretty good look to go out on, right?
Across the field, Cerberus lay down in the snow, grunted. That’s one full puppy, thought Holland. He smiled, then slumped straight down on legs that wouldn’t hold him any longer, with a thump, into the mud.
88
“Shit…Dad?”
“Not dead yet…” said Holland. He couldn’t smile anymore…even his face, it seemed, was frozen. He could barely tell his mouth what to do. Making words was hard.
Ank knelt down in the freezing mess at their feet and pulled his head into her lap.
“That’s one way to get out of answering tricky questions…bit extreme, though.”
Holland smiled up with his numb lips to Ank. “Worked, didn’t it?”
“We’ll go get you warm…okay?”
“Good. You know, Ank…I always liked dogs….always did,” said Holland. “Know where you stand with a good dog. Not like cats.”
“Well, we’ll get a dog, Dad. Okay? Not a cat.”
“Good. Can’t stand cats.”
Damn, it was cold, in the snow.
“Pripyat sucks, eh?”
“I like it,” Ank shrugged. “Could’ve been better, maybe.”
“We did good, though, right? Demons and Gods, pew pew! Big dog. Good boy. Woof!”
“Holland, you’re ranting.” Ank’s voice was full of concern. Holland was shaking, in the snow, in her lap.
“I’m fucking cold,” said Holland. “Take me somewhere warm, Ank…David. Somewhere with whiskey. Good whiskey…not the supermarket shit I normally buy. Something Scottish. Cigarettes. Bacon. I’m cold. I’m drunk on radiation. Tired and cold. So fucking cold, Ank.”
“We’ll take you home.”
“Can’t go home, Ank. Charon took my silver.”
“What?”
“Dying, honey. I’m dying. I drank half the fucking river. Might as well have been the Styx…fuck…maybe it was.”
“You’re not dying, you daft bastard.”
Holland went right on talking over her, but he kept looking into her eyes. Her black eyes, then, up at the sky. Bright blue sky. Bluest damn sky he’d ever see
n.
“Always wanted to die somewhere warm,” he said. “Wanted to die warm and drunk. For the longest time, I thought the fat would kill me. Or the cigarettes. Or someone quick with a gun, or a fucking werewolf. You know…something else. Not a bit of dirty river water.”
“You’re not dying, Holland.”
Holland looked at Ank. She looked at him.
“Okay. You might be. You look like shit.”
“Want to die warm. I feel a bit ill, I think. Could do with a nice kip. Feet up. Time for a holiday. Want to die warm. In a woman’s arms, maybe. That’d be a trick, wouldn’t it?”
“Mum’s waiting, Dad,” said Ank, sincere. He really did look like he was dying.
“Take me to her, then,” he said. “Take me there.”
“I don’t know where she’s buried, Dad…”
“Cerberus…” said Holland, his voice fading. “Cerberus’ll show you the way.”
Ank looked up with a start and realized Cerberus was right there, watching them. The dog wasn’t a giant any longer, but a normal-sized dog, with just the one head. It wasn’t a spaniel, but some kind of sleek, slim, black breed Ank didn’t know…if ever such a breed existed.
The dog licked her hand.
“Good dog?” she said. Cerberus wagged his tail.
“Ank…just remember…what I did…I did for you. When you hate me…eighteen years…long time for me. For you…nothing. Nothing. Remember?”
“I’ll remember,” she said. But she wasn’t just her mother’s daughter. She was Holland’s daughter, too. She was smart.
“She’ll be proud of you,” a ghost told her, back when she’d been but a girl of seventeen….
My first dead guy, she thought, randomly.
Now she was a woman. And she knew.
She wasn’t an idiot. She didn’t hate Holland. Never would. She simply couldn’t. She loved him.
“I’m tired,” said Holland.
“Close your eyes, then,” she said, with David’s voice, while tears ran across Ank’s ink-stained cheeks.
Holland’s eyes drifted closed.
Ank and David reached out and touched the dog and Holland at the same time, and that was all it took.
BOOK THREE: THE DEAD LANDS
VI. DEATH IS NOT MINE
“You William Blake?”
“Yes I am. Do you know my poetry?
—Dead Man
A film by Jim Jarmusch
89
Holland opened his eyes and discovered that he couldn’t see anything at all. It wasn’t like night-time dark, but like underground dark. The kind of dark that hadn’t, ever, known a light…not the memory of light, the sun or flame or torch. No reflection.
A place of blackness that had always been black.
A place of nothing.
But that wasn’t entirely right, was it? Because he wasn’t cold, not any longer.
If there was nothing, there would be no heat, either, but more importantly, no sense of self. Utter depravation of the senses, were he in a void.
No light, maybe, but there was him. Holland. Something existed in this place, even if it was only him.
He didn’t have any cigarettes, or bacon, or whiskey. But he was still extant, to some degree. If that was the case…maybe there was still some kind of hope that cigarettes, or bacon, or whiskey, might lay somewhere in his future…
Might be a future?
For now, there was just him, in the darkness. Warm and musty dark, like he was in the ground.
Buried? Conscious, but buried? In a grave, or cave, or…
Am I even dead?
He moved his hand. He couldn’t see it, but he felt his face and it was there. He wasn’t laid out. He was sitting. If he could reach his face with his hand he wasn’t in the grave, and more importantly he could feel his own weight pushing down against the bones in his ass.
I’m not dead. I’m just…comfortable?
Holland frowned.
I should be dead.
“Ank?” he said. His voice travelled, like he was somewhere large. From the sound of his voice bouncing back at him, he was in a place larger than a room, and certainly a hell of a lot larger than a grave.
I’m not dead? Am I?
“She’s gone. She’ll be back,” came a voice in the dark and at that instant something licked Holland’s hand and he yelped and nearly shit himself.
The woman laughed. “Holland, you big baby. It’s just Cerberus.”
“Fucking scared the shit nearly right out of me. Why am I not dead?”
“Who says you’re not?”
“Because you’re here. If you’re here, this is heaven. No doubt about that, and I’m damned sure I don’t belong on this side.”
“Oh, you’re smooth, Holland. Always were.”
“I missed you. We always were good together.”
He sensed her smiling, there in the dark. He wondered what she looked like now. Wondered, too, if she could sense his smile, the way his words came out around it. The smile, shaping the sound of his words and the feel of them. Wondered if his voice felt as good to her as hers did to him.
I’m not smiling, though, am I? I’m fucking beaming. I’m in the dark grinning like a lunatic. I must look like a lunatic. Must stink…should’ve shaved…brushed my teeth…shit…
Fuck, I feel like a kid on a first date…I was dying but five minutes ago…
“Did you see her?”
“I did.”
“She’s great, isn’t she?”
The woman in the dark was crying, but happy, too. “She is. She’s her father’s daughter.”
If she could cry…
Holland’s mind, as ever, working out. Figuring out. Thinking, but knowing, too, because life got all screwed up if you let doubt in. Holland didn’t.
If she could cry…she was…
She’s back.
“Her mother’s, too. More you, I think. More you. As it should be. Was she angry? Angry when she found out…I lied?”
“Not for long. She understands. What’s time? To her? To me?” The woman shook her head in the dark. “She understands.”
Holland listened to the sounds she made as she moved around him, in the dark.
Death, his wife, undressing.
He thought about getting up, but what was he going to do? Crash around in the dark, playing kiss-chase with his dead wife?
Actually, he thought. That wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had…
Eighteen years…a long time. Long enough for Holland to be getting interested just from the sounds in the dark. Cloth on flesh.
She’s back, alright.
“Why am I not dead?” he asked, his voice cracking, not because he was worried about being dead…but because he could feel her breathing, somewhere behind him, then, to his side.
“Friends in low places?”
He heard her slide onto the bed beside him. She laid her head against Holland’s shoulder, her hair, first, then the weight of her. Her skin, against his, her face, touching him.
He put his hand out, to hold her, to feel her, after eighteen years.
And his hand touched…her flesh.
She was naked. She was cold, still, but more than she’d been when they’d parted…she was bone no longer.
“You’re stronger. Healing.”
He felt her nod, her hair tickling his chest and shoulder. He was naked, too.
“It’s been a long time,” said his wife.
Holland felt her smile. He smiled, then, he whistled.
“Cerberus,” he said. “Out.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Craig Saunders is the author of many novels and novellas, including Rain and The Estate, and the forthcoming DarkFuse titles Bloodeye and Flesh and Coin. He writes horror and fantasy for fun and humor when he’s feeling serious, which isn’t often.
He lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife and three children, likes nice people and good coffee.
Find out more at:
ww
w.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/craigrsaundersauthor
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.
Table of Contents
MASTERS OF BLOOD AND BONE
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BOOK ONE: NORFOLK, ENGLAND
I. The Man Born in a Book
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II. The Changeling
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III. The Game of Blood and Bone
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BOOK TWO: PRIPYAT, UKRAINE
IV. To Cross A Wide River
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Master of Blood and Bone Page 17