Darkwalker

by E. L. Tettensor

  The spirit reflected on this. “What I saw will not be helpful to you. It was the inside of a shack, but I do not know where. The body was covered while the Adali transported it.” It was the most complex thought he had expressed so far.

  “I believe I know the place you are referring to. We found it some days later, by which time it had already been deserted. All that was left was a boy, and he had gone mad.”

  Vincent cocked his head. “Mad?”

  “Yes.” Lenoir shivered at the memory. “We found the boy tied to a chair, and when we released him, he attacked my sergeant. He was screaming and biting like a fiend. He was quite mad.”

  “I know this boy,” said Vincent, surprising Lenoir. “He is not mad.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The soul is gone now. He is alone.”

  Lenoir stared. “I . . . do not understand.”

  The absinthe eyes locked on him, sending a shudder down Lenoir’s spine. “The soul they summoned, the one they tried to channel into the boy. It is gone. They did not succeed.”

  By the sword, Lenoir swore inwardly. Merden was right. The corpse thieves had been trying to replace the boy’s soul with that of a dead child. “They succeeded at least partially,” he said, more to himself than to Vincent. “The boy had two souls, it seems, and it drove him mad.”

  “For a time, but the spell did not last. The soul of the dead child returned to the spirit realm.”

  “How do you know?” Lenoir was so morbidly fascinated that he forgot even his dread.

  “It is in my memories. The souls of the dead remember, and their memories are mine.” The chill in Vincent’s voice became icy, and the absinthe eyes narrowed to slits. “The dead should not have new memories. They should not be torn from their rest. It is a mortal sin.”

  Lenoir huddled deeper into his coat, but it gave him little comfort. The cold he felt did not come from without. “When I asked you earlier, you said you had not seen a child.”

  “That is so. But for a brief time, I saw through the eyes of a child. I saw you, though I did not recognize you at the time.”

  Of course. The boy Mika had been blindfolded when they found him in the abandoned farmhouse. He had probably not seen his captors, or anything else until Kody removed the blindfold. At that time, the soul of the dead child had been present in Mika’s body, along with his own.

  “Long has it been since I have seen through the eyes of the living,” Vincent said distractedly. Untold years of emptiness echoed in his voice.

  Lenoir returned to his original line of questioning. “The second corpse, did they take it to the same place?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they do with it?”

  “Necromancy.”

  “They were trying to resurrect the dead children,” Lenoir prompted, recalling Merden’s theory.

  “No.”

  Lenoir stared in surprise. “No? Then what were they doing?”

  “The souls of the children whose bodies were taken have not been disturbed. Their flesh alone has been defiled.”

  What in the flaming below? Lenoir was thoroughly confused. “Then whose soul was channeled into Mika’s body?”

  Vincent seemed to consider his response before speaking. “The necromancers did not seek to reanimate the children whose bodies they took,” he said, and Lenoir had the impression he was choosing his words carefully. “They only wished to find a suitable host body. It is another soul they seek to resurrect, a soul long dead. They failed to channel this soul into a dead body, so now they seek to use the living.”

  Lenoir felt sick. At the same time, he could not deny that he was captivated. One short week ago, he had been investigating (or, more accurately, Kody had been investigating) a set of bizarre, but ultimately harmless, crimes. Then, when Zach had been taken, Lenoir had assumed they were dealing with a run-of-the-mill predator—disturbing, certainly, but sadly commonplace. The reality of what was actually going on was unfathomable. Even Kody, who had seen a conspiracy that Lenoir himself had refused to acknowledge, would never have imagined something this dark and complex.

  “Whose soul are they trying to resurrect?”

  “I no longer recall his name.”

  “Was he from Kennian?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long ago did he die?”

  Vincent considered. “I have lost the ability to measure time as mortals do. But I think he would be a man now, perhaps twenty or twenty-five.”

  Assuming the boy had died at Zach’s age, that would mean he passed away more than a decade ago. “What else can you tell me about him?”

  “He was murdered.”

  Somehow Lenoir was not surprised. “Who murdered him?”

  Vincent closed his eyes, as though remembering. “His father.”

  Something bumped Lenoir’s memory, a thought brushing past too swiftly for him to recognize. He let it go; it would be back when it was ready. For now, he had to focus on the most direct route to Zach. “Let us leave that for the moment. You said you had seen two more corpse thieves. Do you know where they are?”

  “Of course. I can feel when they are near.”

  Lenoir could not help himself; he had to ask. “Then why couldn’t you find me, all those years ago?”

  Vincent turned to look at him, and Lenoir knew immediately he had made a mistake. The terror returned in a surge so powerful that his stomach heaved.

  He raised a shaky hand. “I am sorry I asked. It was foolish curiosity. I have no intention of trying to escape.”

  Vincent said nothing.

  Lenoir stood unsteadily, his fear-soaked muscles barely able to carry him. “Let us go. We can interrogate your next . . . your mark.” Somehow he did not think Vincent would think of the corpse thieves as “victims.”

  Vincent swept forward with liquid grace, Lenoir hurrying after. He did not know what Vincent considered “near,” but he hoped they had some distance to travel, for he needed time to recover himself. He would not be an effective interrogator if he was still quivering when they arrived.

  • • •

  A light drizzle had begun to fall as Lenoir and Vincent quit the market district, and by the time they reached the Camp, it had become a full-blown downpour. It tortured the meager shanties that passed for dwellings, the construction of which could scarcely withstand the daily travails of gravity, let alone a storm. Rain clattered noisily against scraps of tin siding, soaked thatch and animal skins, gouged away muddy foundations. It pooled in every sag and hollow, running in rivulets from sunken rooftops. The haze of smoke that typically choked the narrow gaps between the tents and hovels began to dissolve as water leaked through, snuffing the cooking fires. Muddy pathways were swiftly becoming rivers of sludge, carrying refuse and excrement and anything else not tied down. In a few short minutes, the Camp had gone from depressing slum to perfect hell.

  The stench of the place was almost more than Lenoir could take, and his stomach caught in his throat as he trailed Vincent between the hovels, doing his best to keep to high ground lest his shoes become steeped in something vile. He bowed his head against the rain, barely glancing at the scenes he passed—bedraggled men scrambling to cover holes in their shelters, bony dogs shivering in corners, thick brown water accumulating in puddles that threatened to flood nearby dwellings. Even so, he could not help registering the fact that nearly every face he saw was Adali. The Camp was one of the largest quarters of Kennian; Lenoir would not have guessed there were so many Adali squatters in the Five Villages. It made him realize how long it had been since he visited the slums. Like most hounds, he avoided the place at all costs. Though the Camp teemed with crime, nobody much cared if the slum dwellers were at one another’s throats.

  Even over the rain, Lenoir could hear coughing from inside many of the huts—from the smoke, or disease, or both. But he could also hea
r laughter. Children chattered and squealed, their small voices incongruously bright, like flowers pushing up through the muck. Even here, he thought, life goes on. What have these people to look forward to? And yet they laugh. They have children. They strive. They do not wallow in despair and wait for death to claim them. Caught in a sudden fit of self-loathing, he quickened his step, willing this errand to be over.

  As for Vincent, the spirit was wholly undaunted by the rain, and seemed to take no notice of the mud that soaked his boots and trousers. His raven black hair was plastered against his skull, shining silver in the moonlight, but he made no effort to push it back off his face. He moved with purpose, his steps guided by some unknown sense. He seemed barely even to register his surroundings, relying on neither sight nor sound to orient him. Lenoir supposed that the only reason Vincent was on foot, instead of simply appearing in a shadow somewhere, was so his mortal companion could follow.

  The spirit stopped in front of a nondescript hovel, turning to look wordlessly at Lenoir. Nodding, Lenoir ran a hand over this thinning hair and knocked on the door, a slab of rotting wood mounted on crude hinges of nails and wire loop. Vincent stepped back, melting into the shadows so completely that for a moment Lenoir wondered if he had vanished altogether.

  A disheveled Adal answered the door. He eyed Lenoir suspiciously, glancing around to see if there were others nearby. “What?” he growled.

  “Pardon me for disturbing you, sir, but I wonder if you might be willing to answer a few questions.”

  “What kind of questions? Who are you?” He had the high cheekbones and wide-spaced eyes of his people, and his brow was beaded with moisture. Rain or sweat? There was no way to tell.

  “I am Inspector Lenoir of the Metropolitan Police.” Lenoir spoke in a low voice, barely audible above the rain. It was doubtful that the neighbors were fond of hounds. “And I am soaked to the bone, so kindly let me in.”

  The look of terror that crossed the man’s face was so obvious that Lenoir wondered how he survived in the slums. He was evidently not a hardened criminal. Lenoir doubted he could even hold his own in a card game. “What do you want?” the man repeated, his own voice lowered to a near whisper.

  “You know perfectly well what I want.” Lenoir was not typically so direct, but with a man this cowardly, intimidation was the best tactic. “Let us go inside, and we can talk without involving my men.”

  “I don’t see anybody else.” The man looked over Lenoir’s shoulder again.

  “Of course not,” Lenoir said impatiently. “It would make little sense for them to show themselves unless they are needed.”

  The man hesitated, but he stood aside for Lenoir to enter, closing the door behind him. Definitely not a cardplayer, Lenoir thought.

  There was no fire in the hut, only a small oil lamp that scarcely cast enough light to see by. For the first time in a great many years, Lenoir was thankful for the dark.

  “Vincent,” he said calmly, “please show yourself. You will save us some time.”

  The man barely had time to look confused before Vincent appeared in a corner of the hut, his absinthe eyes flashing in the lamplight. The man started to scream, but Lenoir was ready, leaping forward and clamping his hand over the man’s mouth.

  “Silence!” he hissed. The man was much taller than he, and it took all his strength to keep the squirming wretch in check. “Do as you are told, and I will spare your life!”

  Vincent, for his part, stood unmoving in the corner. That was well. The spirit’s presence was terrifying enough; if he made any threatening moves, the man might break altogether. Lenoir needed him to be pliable, but coherent. It would do no good if he was literally scared witless.

  When the man’s screams had subsided to whimpers, Lenoir released him. “Sit,” he commanded, and the man complied, plopping down onto a straw mat. He stared up at Lenoir with abject terror in his eyes. Lenoir knew that look. It was the look of a man marked for death. He himself had worn it only hours ago. Perhaps he wore it still.

  “What is your name?”

  “Kern.”

  Lenoir gestured behind him. “You know who this is, don’t you, Kern? You have heard stories of him since you were a child, no?”

  The man began to weep. Lenoir decided to back off the bellows, lest he stoke the fires too much. “I will spare your life if you cooperate. Do you understand?”

  Kern was blubbering into his chest and seemed not to have heard. Lenoir leaned down and slapped him. “Do you understand?” The man nodded, snuffling. “Good. Now tell me, where is the boy?”

  Kern sobbed loudly. “None of this was supposed to happen. There wasn’t supposed to be any boy, at least not a living one! Just the bodies, they said. They never said anything about hurting anyone.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Ridiculous. You and your friends have held him for days.”

  “Yes, it’s true, but they moved him this morning. I don’t know where, I swear!”

  Lenoir dropped to his haunches and leaned in threateningly. With Vincent at his back, he felt powerful. He felt like Wrath itself. He was almost giddy with it. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

  Kern began to sob again. Lenoir waited patiently until the spasm subsided. “The hounds were getting close,” Kern said. “And the others were turning up dead. . . .” His gaze strayed to Vincent, and his eyelids began to flutter as though he might faint.

  Lenoir swore under his breath. “Focus, Kern!”

  The man nodded, obviously making an effort. “They said they were going to move him this morning. I would have gone with them, but I’m sick with fever.”

  Lenoir glanced at the man’s brow. It was slick with moisture. He had noticed it before, but put it down to fear. He reached out and placed the back of his hand against Kern’s forehead; sure enough, it was hot to the touch. “And you don’t know where they took him?” he asked sternly. Kern shook his head. “Who is your leader, and where can I find him?”

  “There were two, but one of them’s dead.”

  “Raiyen.”

  Kern nodded miserably.

  “And the other? Who is he?”

  “His name is Los. He lives with the rest of the clan, in a camp near Berryvine. He’s been staying in a shack not far from here, but he hasn’t been back there in weeks. He was making preparations before, and now he stays with the boy.”

  Lenoir considered. It did not do him much good to learn the man’s name, nor would it help to send watchmen to find out more about him. Lenoir was not looking to build a case against Los; what he needed was to find the man—and quickly.

  “Who else are you working with?” Perhaps he would have more luck with another member of Kern’s crew.

  “All dead,” Kern whimpered. “Just me and Ani left.”

  “Ani?”

  From behind him, a chill voice spoke. “I know this woman. I have seen her.”

  Lenoir stood. They had gotten all they could from Kern, at least for now. He was bitterly disappointed at his luck. Kern’s illness was the only reason he could not give them Zach’s exact location. But perhaps this Ani would give them more. They needed to hurry.

  “I never wanted to hurt the boy, I swear. Nothing is the way Raiyen said it would be. They tricked me!”

  Lenoir ignored his feeble excuses. “That will be all for the moment. If I were you, I would stay in this hut and not leave, not even to move your bowels. Understand?”

  Kern nodded mutely, and Lenoir turned to go.

  Vincent stepped forward and snapped his wrist, sending his barbed scourge around Kern’s neck.

  “Wait!” Lenoir cried. “What are you doing?”

  Vincent ignored him. Lenoir could only watch helplessly as the spirit choked the life out of the sickly coward called Kern.

  When it was over, Lenoir tur
ned and stalked out of the hut, only to find Vincent waiting for him outside. He whirled on the spirit, his anger flaring beyond the reaches of his fear. “Why did you do that? I gave him my word that we would spare his life!”

  “You should not have.”

  “We might have needed him later!”

  Vincent said nothing. He just stood there implacably as the rain pelted him, bouncing off his leather jerkin and streaming down the sides of his nose.

  “You murdered him, when he might have been the only one who could lead us to Zach!”

  “I had no choice.”

  “What do you mean, you had no choice? The fool was harmless!”

  “He was marked. I had no choice.”

  Merden’s words returned to Lenoir’s mind: It is said that he has no will of his own, at least none he can exert.

  “But you spared me,” Lenoir pointed out, dimly aware that he did not sound appropriately grateful for it.

  “You have not been spared.”

  Strictly speaking, that was true—Lenoir’s sentence had not been commuted, only deferred. “But you could have waited, at least until we found Zach.”

  “Perhaps,” the spirit allowed. “But it is done now.” He turned and headed back the way they had come.

  Lenoir could only follow.

  CHAPTER 20

  Ani was dead.

  Her corpse lay in a heap in the middle of her apartment, the dark stain beneath her thick and cold. Vermin skittered along the floorboards, drawn to the smell of blood. The open gash in her throat was already moving with flies.

  Some part of Lenoir had expected this, but that did nothing to dampen the despair that threatened to overwhelm him. This woman had been his only remaining lead, his best chance of finding Zach. She had also been Vincent’s final target, the last of the corpse thieves whose faces he had seen through the eyes of the dead. Lenoir’s time was nearly up, and he had nothing to show for it. He should have questioned Kern about motive when he had the chance, but he had been in such a hurry to find Zach . . .