The Dormant (The Sublime Electricity Book #4)

by Pavel Kornev

  "Doesn't matter," Smith waved it off. "All that matters is whether you were ordered to blow up the carriage as it came or left."

  "I was not given any instructions on that account." I shot out. "And let's talk about you! What were you doing there?"

  Thomas Smith sighed heavily, placed the carbine on the driver's seat and called me after him.

  "Let's go!"

  He walked up to the ladder against the wall, went up it and threw back a hatch leading to the roof. I came after him, not understanding the need for such complications, but we didn't have to go down to the ground. The investigator went right down from the garage onto the eave of a neighboring building and climbed into a window that had been left open. There was nothing left to do but join him.

  The cramped kitchen was extremely messy, and it was obvious that most of the trash was left here by the previous residents. All that belonged to Thomas, clearly, was a battery of vials on the bedside table. They were too clean and free of dust.

  "Make yourself at home," Smith said, pointing at a crooked stool and pulling off his jacket. On his belt, there was a holster with a semi-automatic pistol, the very same government model Colt.

  I closed the window frame and sat down on the stool, but before I managed to start interrogating, the investigator asked:

  "How do you mean 'from the very top?' Her Highness is in a coma. Did the order come from the regent?"

  "I don't know the details. Better tell me what you were doing there, Thomas. Your turn to answer questions."

  The investigator winced in pain and started unbandaging his left hand but didn't keep mum.

  "I was expecting Aztecs," he said. Then he exclaimed: "Curses! They led me there!"

  I remembered the darkness filling Riverfort and shivered.

  "Did the priests perform some kind of ritual there?"

  "Do you have any other theories?"

  "Wait!" I shuddered. "But you knew about this in advance! You told me about this yesterday! Why didn't you inform Department Three then?!"

  Thomas Smith threw the bloodied bandages in the waste bin and turned to me with his fingers splayed. His bloodied pinky was missing a segment, and his ring finger was missing two.

  "I did," the investigator declared and pulled back his shirt collar, showing a bandage on his neck. "And I very nearly lost my life after that. I don't think the attack was random."

  "Did Aztecs do that?"

  "No, some local expert. He was waiting in the back yard of my hotel with a knife."

  "Start from the beginning," I suggested. "Alright?"

  Smith removed a grimy pot from the sink and uncorked one of the bottles, pouring transparent liquid on the stumps of his fingers. The smell of spirits dispersed through the kitchen.

  "What do you know about the Reaper?" he asked, beginning to place a fresh bandage on his hand. "He’s a hardened killer who cuts out peoples' hearts."

  "Only what's written in the papers. At our last meeting, you said it was Aztec related."

  "And it is," Thomas confirmed, unbuttoning his shirt and starting to change the bandage on his neck. The cut looked deep and inflamed.

  "You sure you don't wanna go to a doctor?" I suggested.

  "I'll live."

  "What if it gets infected?"

  "It was a clean cut," Smith assured me. "I knew all along that it was Aztecs behind the murders, but I couldn't prove it."

  I nodded in silence, not wanting to interrupt him.

  "Only after the fourth murder did I notice a strange pattern," Thomas continued and pointed at the table. "Open the map-holder."

  Inside, I found a map and a tour guide of New Babylon.

  "I don’t know the city well, so I marked the locations of the crimes on the map," he explained. "Yesterday, when I was planning my route for the next day, I realized all the murders could be plotted on a circle."

  I turned over the well-thumbed map and studied the even circle drawn, not by hand, but with a compass. The needle point of the measuring tool was around Palace Square, and the circle encompassed practically the whole old city. The crime scenes were not placed on the pencil line at random; all five of the dots were equidistant from one another.

  "A pentacle?" I forwarded a theory of how the investigator had managed to determine the location of the last murder.

  "The very same."

  "But why did you decide to wait for killers at the gate to the mint?"

  "Tell me, Lev, how could I have gotten inside?" Thomas snorted.

  "No!" I waved it off. "Why Riverfort exactly? After all, the murder might have happened somewhere nearby? The scale of the map is insufficient for such accurate calculations!"

  Smith put the trash bin under the sink and left the kitchen.

  "Let's go, Lev!" he called me after him.

  The narrow dark corridor led us to a room with a curtained window. The investigator laid down on a sagging couch, and I unbuttoned my jacket and sat down on the inflated bed.

  Thomas splashed some bourbon from the open bottle into a dirty glass, drank it and poured some more right away.

  "Pain killer," he explained, sitting back in the couch.

  "Get yourself to a doctor."

  "Nonsense!" the investigator shot out. But he immediately calmed down and begged forgiveness: "Sorry, Lev. I haven't been in my right mind the last few days."

  "Let's get to business," I suggested. "So, why Riverfort precisely?"

  Thomas took a sip of bourbon and furrowed his brow.

  "There were two aspects that drew my attention from the beginning," he said after that. "Only women were being killed..."

  "The papers said they were all prostitutes."

  "So they said," the investigator nodded. "All the victims had their eyes pulled out after death."

  "Excuse me?" I asked in confusion, not really fully understanding. "So what does that mean?"

  "For Aztec rituals, the eyes have no significance," Smith assured me. He took a sip of the bourbon and continued his story: "And that caught my interest. I thought: why pull out a dead body's eyes? What is that meant to hide? I didn't believe the killer was some mere madman, after all..."

  "They're illustrious!" I suddenly guessed, and stinging shivers ran up my spine. "All the victims were illustrious!"

  "As it turned out, yes," the investigator confirmed my theory. "With some weak talents and hereditary diseases, but illustrious nevertheless. At first, that didn't tell me anything, but the fourth victim was found in the middle of Piazza Galileo, and the body wasn't simply thrown there. No–the heart was outlined for all to see. So, I understood that it wasn't only the identity of the victims that held significance, but the location of the ritual as well!"

  "And then you drew the circle?"

  "Indeed," Thomas Smith laughed and drank his bourbon. "And also bought the travel guide."

  "And?"

  "And it turned out that the guesthouse they discovered the first body in on Faraday Boulevard was built on a former wasteland. And, on the Night of the Titanium Blades one of the fallen was killed there. And so on for all the crime scenes increasingly. One, two, three. On Piazza Galileo, four fallen were executed and in Riverfort..."

  I remembered Princess Anna's words. I remembered where my grandfather was that night.

  "Their blood flowed like a river," I said, sensing everything freeze up inside me.

  Thomas Smith took a half-empty bottle off the nightstand and looked at it in thought. He didn't fill his glass again, though, and placed it back.

  "I drew the circle, calculated the approximate location of the next crime and very quickly discovered it. Riverfort."

  "And the time?"

  "There was a month between the first and second murders. The third was just two weeks after that, and the second was another week later. Calculating the approximate time was not difficult. I knew where and when, so I went to the police. I didn't tell them the details over the phone, I said only that I had found the trail of the killer and agreed to a
meeting. On the evening of the same day, someone tried to cut my throat."

  "Who in the police did you work with?"

  "Senior Inspector Moran," said Smith, noting how my eyelid twitched as he said it. Like an experienced poker player, he got on guard. "Ever met him?" he asked.

  "I've had the pleasure, yes," I admitted.

  "Now, I’m not gonna say he was mixed up in all that," the investigator warned. "The leak could have come from one of his subordinates. I spoke with an assistant."

  I nodded. That really may have been.

  "The Aztecs couldn't get into Riverfort. I supposed that they would perform the sacrifice on the bridge and took a position on the roof of a nearby building." Thomas Smith stood to his feet with a pained grimace and looked at me. "But instead of the Aztecs, you showed up. How did that happen, Lev?"

  "Hardly a simple coincidence, Thomas."

  "Exactly! The circle was closed, the ritual completed. Someone very important brought the priests to the mint. We don't know who, it all comes down to your order. When were you meant to blow the bomb: as they entered the fort, or as they left? Were you supposed to prevent the ritual or get rid of the Aztecs afterward? That's the question!"

  I didn't share the investigator's conviction at all, because I knew the intended victim of the explosion. But I found myself giving into doubts nevertheless.

  What if I had been used, lied to, and that wasn't an attempt on the regent? Or maybe I was supposed to kill two birds with one stone?

  Thomas Smith went into the kitchen and returned with a jacket in his hands.

  "Where are you going?" I started worrying.

  "I'm going out to hear what people are saying. It's probably best for you not to show yourself outside. Close the door behind me."

  I shut the lock, returned to the room and sat on the sofa. I had to think my unfortunate situation over, but my head was filled with fog, and it was as if I was being pushed down into the couch. Sleep flooded over me with unbearable weight. My eyes started sagging, and I began to yawn. Then I forced myself on my feet and started pacing from wall to wall.

  The door of the dress cabinet flew open with a creak, but I didn't even shudder. I was expecting something like this. With plain malice in his eyes, the Beast was staring at me with his toothy countenance. His pale skin was glowing from the inside with the luster of an otherworldly power.

  "Bugger, Leo!" The albino melted into a wide smile. "Congratulations, you goofed up again! Now your cousin will certainly order your head cut off!"

  "My head will be cut off, but we’ll both go to hell," I reminded him calmly.

  "My boy, that is wonderful! After all, I'm the embodiment of your drive for self-destruction, or did you forget?" the Beast snorted and lit his cigar. Then he thoughtfully stroked behind his ear with a clawed finger and added: "Although, it must be said that you're doing a great job of self-destruction without me."

  "None of that is right!"

  "Everything is going according to plan, Leo. You just aren’t aware of it. A pawn is not told it will be exchanged for a queen. It just gets moved forward."

  "I’m no pawn," I shook my head. "I’m at the very least a rook."

  "Bugger!" the albino laughed hard, narrowing his eyes, glowing with an otherworldly luster. "You're right about the most important bit!"

  "I'm right."

  My imaginary friend's word about another person's plan burned my soul with unexpected power.

  The murders of illustrious, all women, a circle on the map around the Old City, human sacrifice in the place where the blood of the fallen was spilled, that was all part of something incomparably larger. I was also reminded of my cousin's fears, and somehow all at once, the prattle about a creature dormant in her blood stopped seeming funny. The center of the circle was on Palace Square, and that could not have been a simple coincidence.

  Someone was playing a game with devilishly high stakes.

  "Bugger! Boy, your head is just bursting with bad ideas right now!" the Beast grinned. "Splosh! And there go your brains!"

  "Shut up!" I demanded. "Don't bother me!"

  The albino came out of the cabinet, which was too small for him. He took the half empty bottle of bourbon from the nightstand, tossed his cigar butt in the glass as if in revenge, and went back.

  "I'll shut up," he groaned after that, "but, boy, what are you gonna do when a police detachment comes to visit?"

  Leaving deep scratches with his claws, the Beast slammed the door shut from inside and went silent. I walked over to the cabinet, opened it and discovered without particular surprise that there was no one inside.

  "A magician, bugger!" tore itself from me.

  I patted on my lips, took the glass with butt and walked over to the window, but I couldn't open the dried-out frame, and headed for the kitchen. Tossing the cigar and the rest of the brandy outside, I looked at the empty yard carefully, then stood at the entrance and listened. Silence.

  A wave of sleepiness rolled over me again. I started digging through shelves in search of something to perk me up, but didn't find coffee or tea, or anything edible. Thomas clearly hadn't planned on needing a secret apartment, and hadn’t had time to look for something more suitable after that man slit his throat.

  What could I say? Trying to work with the metropolitan police could lead to quite frightening surprises!

  I laughed quietly to myself, and immediately heard a knock at the door.

  I didn't look through the peep hole, just stood to the side and cocked my pistol.

  "Lev, it's me!" I heard from the corridor.

  My imaginary friend's warning had scratched my stretched nerves, but I decided to believe the investigator and undid the lock. Thomas walked over the threshold, quickly locked the door and extended me a paper.

  "You've got big problems, buddy," he said, extending a fresh edition of the Capital Times with a grainy photograph of me.

  However, it wasn't all so bad–the note didn't refer to any involvement in the attack on Riverfort, they were searching for me based on some cockamamie accusation that I was a threat to state security. What was more, they used a photo taken on my last visit to the Newton-Markt and a person who didn't know me well would find it extremely difficult to recognize me now.

  "Department Three!" I frowned in disgust.

  "You aren't surprised?" Thomas squinted.

  "I was expecting something like this," I admitted, crumpling the paper in annoyance and throwing it into the trash can. "Do you think I linked up with the Imperial Guard because my life was going well?"

  "Is that how they convinced you to help?"

  "Well sure."

  "Very interesting!" The investigator shook his head, walked into the room and looked around for the bottle. "Lev, where's the bourbon?"

  "Enough drinking!" I rebuffed the investigator. "What'd you hear about Riverfort?"

  "Everyone is talking about a gas attack, but they haven't decided yet if it was anarchists or someone else," Thomas answered. "The neighborhood has been blocked off, and no one can get in or out."

  "Gas attack?" I considered it. "Not a bad explanation."

  Smith collapsed on the sofa and frowned, rocking his wounded hand.

  "Complete nonsense!" he shouted out angrily. "It won't fool anyone! It smells of the otherworldly no matter what! The Aztecs were on the rise, they were gathering strength gradually. At first, the place where one fallen died, then two, three and so forth. Such power cannot be kept under control for long, so they had to increase their tempo. But they got what they wanted. They took Riverfort, the most impenetrable fortress of the Empire."

  "I don't think it has to do with the mint," I shook my head. "The gold was lefft in the safe."

  "The Aztecs have plenty of gold," Thomas snorted. "What matters is the very fact of the successful attack! It's spitting in the face of the Empire, public humiliation!"

  I shook my head.

  "Remember what you said about the placement of dots on the circle. Fiv
e points at even distances. Doesn't that remind you of something?"

  "The Aztecs drew a pentacle? And what of it?"

  "A pentagram," I said. "Pythagoras, Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci. The golden ratio. Harmony."

  "Oh devil!" Thomas Smith gasped, hopping to his feet and walking from the window to the door and back. "Every pentagram can contain another pentagram. If the Aztecs harnessed the power of the ritual not with a circle, but in accordance with the golden ratio..."

  He ran to the kitchen, returned with the map and stuck his finger in the center of the Old City.

  "The final ritual should take place at Palace Square!" the investigator announced, glancing at the watch and biting his lip. "And its power will be truly colossal..."

  "One cannot cut out the heart of a person in the middle of Palace Square," I doubted. "No magic can allow them to force the police to look the other way. That is impossible!"

  "But they got Aztecs into the Imperial Mint!" Thomas parried easily.

  I was already captivated by the new story, though, and didn't let that knock me off course.

  "It isn't all so simple. The creature that burst out of Riverfort will not stay in the city long, it can only go one place –into the catacombs."

  "I don't get it." Thomas Smith shuddered. "What creature?"

  "Didn't you see it?"

  "What creature, Lev?!"

  I gathered my thoughts and briefly described the infernal creature I’d seen earlier:

  "A person with flayed skin and a stone knife in his hands. Seemingly obsidian."

  "Devil!" the investigator went pale. "They summoned Itztli!"

  "Who?" I didn't understand.

  "Itztlacoliuhqui, the deity of obsidian knives and human sacrifice," Thomas Smith explained. "If you're right, that will increase the power of the subsequent ritual by ten times! We must tell the authorities!"

  "The authorities?" I snorted. "Which authorities exactly? After talking with Moran, you nearly lost your life!"

  "But there must be someone above him!"

  "He's the current deputy head of the metropolitan police. Above him are only the minister of justice and the regent. Whose carriage do you think was used to transport the Aztecs into the mint?"

  "The minister of justice's?"