Fool’s spin ended against the wall, the impact rattling through him, the shock of it making him drop his gun. He was half down, face against wall when the demon struck him again, driving him sideways and fully over, his face scraping along the brickwork as his legs gave out from under him. He felt his skin tear, felt pain like the sting of insects dart across what was left of his cheek, and then his shoulder was into the mud and his head bounced against his gun. The demon leaped onto him, its feet pressing him farther down, forcing his face into the earth. He tried to breathe, took in a mouthful of foul-tasting dirt and choked, spitting, feeling the grit work across his teeth and grate over his gums. He took another breath, felt fragments hit the back of his throat, and retched, but he had nowhere to retch to, his mouth filling rapidly with bile and exhaled air and dirt and he was choking, couldn’t breathe, and then there was a booming sound and the weight lifted off him.
Fool rolled, dragging his face out of mud that seemed reluctant to let him go and spitting out a mass of saliva and vomit and filth. Coughing, he hauled himself over, drawing in a great lungful of wretched air, his throat raw and painful, and then vomited again. His eyes ached, his face burned, a thin gruel of puke spattering across the backs of his hands. Using the wall, he managed to pull himself to a sitting position, wheezing. His eyes were unfocused, and in the blur something pale and dark in uneven patches scrabbled away from him. Fool blinked, clearing earth from his eyes, and saw Summer approaching, gun held in front of her. She fired again and a shriek filled the air. The demon leaped past Fool, darting back down the road toward the Houska, slamming into one of the gates. The wood broke under the assault, tearing loose from the wall, and then the thing was gone; Summer fired once more, and then she was through the gate after it.
Fool managed to get to his feet. His cheek felt inflamed, and when he put his hand to it, it came away wet with blood. He blinked again, rubbed at his eyes, and his vision resolved itself. He coughed again, spitting. The gobbet that he expelled from his mouth was brown and semisolid. He reached down for his gun, steadying himself as a wave of dizziness swept through him, and then went after Summer and the demon.
The gate was situated between two of the buildings that wept water from behind their wooden-bound windows, and beyond it was another alley, the narrow strip sloping down into a pool of dark brown liquid. Fool had heard of this, of demons that lived in water above the ground, filling the buildings of their residence with the fluids they needed. As it spilled out, the water flooded around the buildings; here, it had gathered at the rear. The surface of the water was choppy, ripples banging into the walls and then moving back toward each other and tangling. Darts of light rode the ripples, fracturing and re-forming. There was no sign of Summer.
Fool stepped into the water, feeling ahead with his toes. The ground felt soft, pulpy, and he wondered what he was treading on. He felt sick, a swelling nausea that made his jaws clench and sent his stomach flipping and roiling. His vision was beginning to blur again, separating into two images and then coming back into one. He clenched his eyes shut, tried to concentrate, and as he opened them there was a bright flash.
It wasn’t blue but the bright, bleached yellow of a muzzle flash, and on its heels there was a dull boom. The air jerked about him and he stumbled, falling to one knee; the water came up to his chest, smelled stagnant, made his nausea worse and he vomited a third time, unable to help himself. What came out was thin and mostly liquid, bitter on his tongue, but he felt better after and managed to stand again. He wondered about calling for Summer but didn’t have the strength.
The alley came to a T-junction in a few more feet. Fool went left, following instincts he hadn’t realized he had, reading a handprint on the wall and the way the surface of the water broke and merged to know that this was the way they had come. The water was deepening the farther he went, was now up to his waist. He wished he had a lantern or light with him; the buildings loomed about him now and the flooded alley contained little light. Something brushed against his legs and then moved away, and he hoped it was floating garbage rather than any living thing. Which demons lived like this? He tried to remember but couldn’t; Gordie would’ve known, of course, but Gordie was dead.
It was a dead end. Fool came to a brick wall where the buildings joined. Just above the waterline was a window and next to it was a missing chunk of brickwork, the crater clean and, when he put his finger against it, warm. Summer’s shot, he thought. The window was open, and he pulled himself up onto the lower edge of it and then slowly climbed in through the opening. He ached, and it took several minutes to manage it.
The space beyond was dark and as he dropped into it, Fool had the impression of size and emptiness; it felt like a warehouse or a barn. The air was cold and the sound of his movements came back to him in repeating, descending patterns of echoes. He could see little, the damp light from outside falling only a few feet through the window. Fool listened but heard nothing from Summer or the thing they pursued. He couldn’t see where to go and wished he had some light before remembering, finally, that he did.
Fool took the feather from his pocket and held it up above his head. Although it wasn’t bright, its gleam seemed to spread throughout the space around him and gave shape to the shadows. It showed him a wide expanse of emptiness, the floors wooden and dusty. Here and there, square pillars of brick rose from floor to ceiling. A single set of footsteps, dark and wet, led away across the room, each slightly more faded than the last as Summer’s feet had dried. Fool followed them.
The tracks threaded their way around the pillars, sometimes widely spaced, sometimes closer together. She was running and slowing, getting her bearings, maybe listening, thought Fool, and then, Little show-off Fool. It was a distraction from his fear, he realized, to think like this. Each step he took was a step after a demon whose violence was enough to loose souls from flesh and twist bodies into new, warped shapes; he had no reason to think he could stand up to it or defeat it, but he was following anyway. Why, he wondered, why am I doing this? Because of the dead? Because of all the Genevieves, sleeping on wires? Because of justice? No, no, none of those things.
Because of jurisdiction. Because if I don’t, who will?
There was another gunshot, roaring in the near silence, and then a second later a scream, Summer screaming, the noise choking off suddenly in the middle, leaving things unsaid. Fool began to run, heading for where he thought the scream had come from. Summer’s ghostly footsteps had faded to nothing, leaving little more than indentations in the dust every few feet that went toward the space’s far wall. Light came from ahead of him, paler than the feather’s glow, almost lost in it, wavering. He sped up, feeling the breath tear in his throat, feeling his body resist the effort, the damp cloth of his trousers pulling against his skin, his face throbbing, his belly clenching and flopping. The feather shook as he ran, its light shuddering back and forth. Fool came around one of the pillars, still following the marks in the dust and hoping that Summer would make another noise so that he could pinpoint her, that he would hear what sounds she might make over the rasp of his own breathing.
A shadow rose up ahead of Fool, arms outstretched, held up on innumerable spindle limbs like some huge spider waiting for him, emerging from its web toward him. His feet went from under him, somehow moving ahead of his upper body, and he crashed to the floor.
His first thought was that he needed to escape, and his second, following hard on its tail, was that the building was descending somehow, was dropping back into water. The floor was covered in liquid, thick and curdling, coating Fool as he rolled and scrambled. It slicked across his face and got into his mouth, was salty and bitter, and he spat, expecting the demon to pounce on him at any moment. His gun slithered in his grip and he tried to reassert his authority over it but it shifted, his finger slipping from the trigger and fumbling to find it again. He fell against one of the pillars, used it to brace himself, turning and holding the gun out, the feather up.
The th
ing hadn’t moved.
It was making a noise; Fool risked looking up at it and saw liquid spitting and sizzling from it, tiny wisps of steam rising. Shadows pooled under it, stretched out toward him. No, not shadows, something else. It covered the floor and he saw its color, a dark rust, and it was blood, blood swathed across everything, so much blood, and the thing above it wasn’t a demon but was Summer.
She had been strung up between two of the pillars, her arms held taut in the grip of her torn uniform jacket, wrapped around the stone columns in two strands. Her head was down, her hair hanging in front of her face, and her belly had been ripped open and her intestines torn free and left to hang down in great loops, swaying slightly. Her trousers had also been torn and tied to the pillars, used to drag her legs apart and hold them open. Her flesh was white where it was visible, the rich and glittering red of spilled blood everywhere else. Tiny blue threads of lights played up and down her, bubbling out of her and then sinking back. Her soul, Fool thought, and then he caught a glimpse of something pale at his side and something crunched, hard, into the side of his head.
The blow sent Fool crashing back down into Summer’s blood and slithering across the floor and it hurt, lashing spikes of pain across his head, and he was angry, raging, helpless. He tried to rise but the messages were warping somewhere between his brain and body, fracturing, so that he stood not upright but sideways, his legs refusing to do what he wanted them to, and he tilted and then fell again. There was blood in his eyes, and pain, and it was like drowning, the world thickening around him, losing definition, Summer’s body suspended and decaying into a thing without edges and he could see the pale thing coming toward him and knew that this was it and he was done with it all, done with the helplessness and the fear and the agonies and uncertainties and his choices were being removed, each step of the demon’s approach narrowing the strip of his life by another fragment until nothing remained. His gun was gone, drifting out somewhere in the tide of Summer’s blood, lost to him, but he still had the feather clenched in his hand and he lifted it, marveling at the way it threw out its light, and despite everything Fool managed to smile as he waited for whatever came next.
21
“You’re a very lucky man,” said a voice. It was a soft voice but it still crashed in Fool’s head, echoing like the rolling of rocks down a canyon. He tried to sit but bands of pain tightened across him. Muscles in his lower back went into spasm, yanking him back to what he now realized was a soft mattress under him, bending him around as a dazzling wall of pain reached out through him and took tight hold. He heard himself moan and the voice said, “Don’t try to move, not yet.”
While the pain receded, not vanishing but at least falling back to a place of threat rather than attack, Fool obeyed the voice and remained still. Someone moved around the foot of the bed and came to his side, took hold of his wrist. Experimentally, Fool moved his head; his cheek throbbed and his teeth ached, his whole jaw ached, but he could at least move. His vision was hazy, though; there were lanterns hanging from the ceiling of wherever he was, turned low, but their light and their shape were indistinct. He lifted his arm but the owner of the voice, a white hovering, restrained him and said, “A bit at a time. You’ve taken a serious beating and you’ll hurt.”
The voice moved farther up the bed, and Fool saw that it came from a young man. He was dressed in a dirty white coat over Hell’s usual thin gray smock shirt and trousers, and there were crescent moons of dead flesh under his eyes, stained black with tiredness. He was in focus, and with a sudden perspective shift, Fool saw that there was muslin hanging over his bed, draped in billowing waves to the floor, blurring everything beyond the bed. The man saw Fool looking and said, “To give you some privacy.”
“Where am I?” Fool tried to ask, but his voice came out as a battered croak, unrecognizable even to himself. The man put a hand behind Fool’s head, ignoring Fool’s flinch, and very gently lifted him up. With his other hand he brought a glass of water to Fool’s mouth and said, “Sip. Slowly.”
Fool sipped. The water was cold, cutting through dust he didn’t know his throat contained. He took another mouthful, washing it around his teeth and feeling its chill bite against the molars on the left side. He probed the area with a tongue and found most of the teeth loose.
“Where am I?” he asked again, pleased to hear that his voice sounded more normal.
“In the Iomante Hospital,” said the man. “I’m Drow.”
“What happened? Why am I here?” said Fool, looking down at himself. He was clean and naked, had bandages wrapped around his chest. Under the sheet that came up the bed to his waist he could feel that his nudity was complete. “Where are my clothes?”
“You were brought here,” said Drow. “Your clothes we burned.”
“But—” began Fool, but Drow interrupted him.
“There’s no need to worry, the little man brought another set of clothes for you.”
“Little man?” asked Fool and then realized whom Drow meant. “Elderflower?”
“I don’t know. Two demons brought you in, which is usual for this place. I thought you were a little old for a Genevieve, but I’ve seen older. The little man, Elderflower did you say? Elderflower turned up not long after carrying a pile of clothes for you and a gun. He told me that you’re Fool, the Information Man.”
“Yes,” said Fool and then remembered Summer. “Did anyone else come in with me?”
“No.”
It was a vain hope, he had known before asking. Summer had been torn apart, brutalized; there was no way she could have survived. First Gordie and now Summer, taken from him and each other, ripped loose from Hell in moments of fire and blood. Perhaps they’re the luckier ones, he thought, because they’re out of it and I’m still here. To Drow, he said, “The Iomante Hospital? What is this place?”
In answer, Drow lowered Fool back to bed, this time propping two thin pillows behind him so that he remained slightly elevated and could see better. He pulled aside the muslin, hooking it to a rusty curl of metal hammered to the wall. “The Iomante,” he said, sweeping his hand out to take in the room beyond Fool. “We treat Genevieves and Marys.”
It was a long space with a high, vaulted ceiling, the walls light brown wood panels lined with beds. Some had muslin hanging down around them, shielding their occupants, but others were open, and in each that Fool could see was a young man. Some were awake, their eyes open and staring up. Two were sitting up, talking to each other; others were asleep or unconscious or worse, their faces pale in the lamplight. “Demons can be rough with their toys and break them,” said Drow. “They bring them here sometimes, in the hope that we can fix them so that they can play again.”
The man in the bed nearest Fool was swaddled in bandages, bloodied white strips wrapping around his chest and up to his neck. His face was marked with scratches, scabbed and red. Past him, one of the Genevieves was peering at Fool. One of his eyes was bloodshot, entirely red around a pupil that was huge and black, the skin around the eye a rainbow signature of bruises and scrapes. His neck was ringed in more bruises in which Fool could see the marks of thick, clawed fingers. He wanted to speak but didn’t, unsure of what to say to the man. Instead, he turned back to Drow.
“They’re all men,” he said.
“Boys, really,” said Drow. “All the Genevieves are. Women have separate wards in the Iomante, to stop the arguments.”
“Arguments?”
“The Genevieves and the Marys. They don’t get on, fight each other about who the demons prefer. We try to keep them apart, otherwise no one gets any rest.”
Marys, the female equivalent of Genevieves, and they were all treated here and yet he hadn’t realized that the Iomante existed. How many other things had he missed in his journeys around Hell? he wondered. How many other brutalities, how many other places like this? How many people had crept under his notice? But then, wasn’t that the point of Hell? To avoid the notice of anything, to keep hidden and hope that no
thing took an interest in you? To be nothing, less than nothing, in a place where being something was a dangerous thing? Fool sighed, wincing at the pain it caused in his chest.
“You’ve got some serious bruising,” said Drow, becoming businesslike. “And probably a fractured rib or two. Your face has extensive superficial damage. What happened?”
“Thomas was attacked,” said Elderflower from the side of the bed, “in the execution of his duties. Hello, Thomas. How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know,” said Fool honestly. “I hurt when I move. I hurt about everything.”
“Yes,” said Elderflower. “It was a savage attack.”
“How did I get here? I assume you were responsible?”
“Of course. After your excellent deployment of the troops, the situation in the Houska and the surrounding areas was quickly brought under control. Rhakshasas gave me permission to deploy two of the troops who had completed their allotted task to find you. They followed your trail to the water demons’ home and found you.”
“Was it still there?” It, the thing he still didn’t have a name for, the thing that had killed Summer and the Genevieves and the Aruhlians and, indirectly, Gordie.
“It fled when it heard the troops arriving,” said Elderflower. “It likes the shadows and its privacy. Still, Thomas, there will be other times, I’m sure. You were so close.”
“Yes,” said Fool. Little close Fool, just not close enough.
Elderflower held something out to Fool. It was a tube, wrapped not in blue or red ribbons but green. “The first Elevation,” he said. “It takes place tomorrow and your presence is required.”
“Yes,” said Fool, taking the tube. The movement of souls, the raising of the lucky few. It meant the delegation was nearly finished, that there were only a few more days of their presence. “Where is Summer?”
The Devil's Detective Page 20