The Illustrious (The Sublime Electricity Book #1)

by Pavel Kornev

  "I had a visit from a Mare last night," I chuckled, throwing on my robe. "Just a Mare, that's all."

  "A simple nightmare?" the girl stared at me in amazement. "That was all from just a normal nightmare?"

  "Not a totally normal one, but basically, yes," I confirmed clearing my throat pointedly.

  Elizabeth-Maria turned to the butler who was running in to see what the sound was from, lowered her eyes to her semi-transparent clothing, but was not at all embarrassed by that and left my bedroom in no particular hurry and with an unflinching sense of her own virtue.

  "We'll have to get new windows put in, Theodor," I then sighed.

  "No matter, Viscount," my servant reassured me. "There's plenty of glass left over from last time."

  "And clean up in here," I asked him, carefully stepping around the junk lying around on the floor. I quickly gathered an armful of clothes and headed to the bathroom to get myself in order.

  There I looked in the mirror, and it must be said that my reflection did not make me happy. The capillaries in my eyes had burst, and the normally colorless luster of my eyes had been replaced with a clearly glowing red shade.

  Nothing scary, mind you. This was basically why I wore dark glasses.

  After taking my brush and tin of tooth powder from the shelf, I rid myself of the unpleasant aftertaste in my mouth, got dressed right in the bathroom and returned to my butler, already in full dress as he cleaned up my bedroom.

  "I don't need to go to work today. I'm just taking the suit back and returning home," I told him. I then took the paper bag lying against the wall and walked to the stairway, but Elizabeth-Maria intercepted me midway.

  "Is there even anything edible here?" she looked out of her room, this time wrapping herself in a long robe for decorum's sake.

  "I'll try to rustle something up," I promised, not having the faintest idea where to get the money to buy provisions.

  "Would you like me to come with you?"

  "It wouldn't be any fun," I waved her off and ran down to the first floor. I got to the gate, turned and began chuckling unhappily, looking over my gloomy estate.

  There was one definite upside to the curse: despite the mortgage and heap of overdue payments, none of my creditors even considered taking my home to cover them. And those who did get that idea...

  What can I say? The Diabolic Plague isn't the kind of disease you can cure with a couple of aspirin pills.

  I WENT TO THE TAILOR'S on foot; I didn't have the money for a steam trolley today, to say nothing of the Metro. That said, I had no reason to rush, so I walked the familiar streets in no particular hurry, wondering which of my few acquaintances would agree to lend me twenty or thirty francs for an indefinite period of time.

  The only person who came to mind was Albert Brandt, but seeing him was the last thing I wanted.

  After returning my suit, I stood on the atelier's porch, took out my tin of sugar drops and tossed a raspberry one into my mouth.

  "Horrible catastrophe in Paris!" came the sudden wail of a boy walking up from the corner and waving a fresh paper. "The great Santos-Dumont is dead! Aeroplane crash! Powder engine explosion! Horrible catastrophe in Paris!"

  The boy’s yelling was so catching, that I dug around in my pockets for a few nickels to buy a paper out of pure curiosity. Unfortunately, I discovered that doing so would have cleaned out my wallet entirely, so I turned away and walked off down the street.

  Horrible catastrophe? Ha! It would be simply impossible to think up a catastrophe more horrible than the dire financial straits I now found myself in.

  Where could I scare up money? Where?!

  Unexpectedly, I remembered my recent invitation to the Witstein Banking House and snapped my fingers.

  That's right! Today is Monday, the bank is open, and where there's a bank, there's money. So that's where I went.

  Once there, I saw a man sitting on the bench outside. He lowered his newspaper and smiled, having noticed my unfeigned amazement.

  "Take a seat, Leopold," Inspector White offered. "I hope you've had enough time to think over my proposal?"

  I stood opposite my boss and nodded:

  "I have. And I will not do it."

  Robert White didn't even bat an eyelash.

  "May I inquire, what your reason is?" he asked quickly after hearing my refusal.

  "I do not want that beast to devour my soul."

  "Don't worry, you'll do just fine."

  "Do just fine? A fallen one has as much power as one hundred tons of dynamite! I don’t even want to get near it!"

  "You'd be missing the chance to make something of your pointless life!"

  "Sorry, inspector. You'll have to make do without me."

  And, not wanting to hear out any more justifications, I turned around and walked in the opposite direction.

  Robert White did nothing to stop me. He didn't even move from his place. He just stayed there, sitting on the bench. But I could feel his gracious smile burning into my back. And that smile made me feel very unwell on a deep level.

  I didn't go to the bank; I went straight home. But it was too late...

  MY PRESENTIMENTS HADN'T betrayed me. I only had to go through the gate to see that the door had been left wide open.

  Theodor had never allowed himself such carelessness!

  I took my Cerberus from my pocket, and undid the safety as I ran up onto the porch. I jumped into the house and immediately saw a rifle casing fly out from under my feet. It hit the skirting board and rolled in place.

  "Shit!" I cursed in a fit of anger, standing over the body of my butler, his forehead blackening from a bullet hole with blood still oozing out of it. I picked up a business card that had been left on Theodor's chest, read the laconic missive on the other side and was once again unable to stop myself from cursing.

  "You know where," read the words on Inspector White's business card. There was nothing else on it, but that was all I needed.

  I did know where. And I also knew that the inspector wouldn't leave me alone until he got what he wanted.

  Should I take this to Department Three?

  With no thought in mind but that, a nervous smirk ripped itself from me.

  Not an option. It would be nice, but it’s not an option.

  After casting the rumpled business card aside, I took a look at my butler and shook my head.

  "Alright, Theodor," I sighed, cracking the bones in my fingers, "let's start over from the beginning."

  And I forced myself to see what was really lying there on the floor, and not in the self-deceived reality of my imagination.

  And the image of my butler began changing and losing human form. His singed skin stretched out over sharp cheekbones. His empty eye sockets collapsed. His lips stretched out into stripes of gray skin, exposing a set of yellow teeth, and his skull was crowned with locks of gray hair. The only thing that didn't change at all was the hole in the forehead. The bullet hole was in the here and now.

  A fist came out of the sleeve unexpectedly and shook. His fingers started scraping on the oak parquet. His feet rolled up the floor into a pair of clean slippers, and then I put the undead man in his place:

  "Patience, Theodor! Patience."

  My butler had not, in fact, survived the night this house was visited by the curse. But he hadn't fully died, either. Theodor was a man of honor. His sense of duty was stronger than death, and that played an evil joke on him – all these years, he had remained locked inside his own dead body, like a criminal on death row. The old man with a sickle could come for him any day, but was taking his time, either intending to exasperate this impudent fellow, peeved at being made to wait, or not knowing which side to approach the stubborn man from. But me...

  I remembered the living Theodor too well for him to come back as a taciturn undead. After all, I didn't have to revive the corpse, it was enough to simply imagine him alive and add the slightest bit of force to my remembrances.

  And where could I get that force,
if my talent drew power from fear?

  From fear, where else? And it wasn't even that imagining living in the manor alone made me shake in horror. What helped me most was an inordinate fear of death.

  Not mine, Theodor's. He was afraid to be resurrected, because the ersatz life I'd gifted him was inevitably doomed to end in yet another death. A moment of agony is equally horrible to the living as it is for those who merely think themselves living. It doesn't matter what height you fall from, if the pit below is bottomless.

  And it was precisely that deadly horror I was playing on. I just had to use my emotions to add a small modicum of reality to it, and Theodor grabbed onto my memories, pulled them on like a mask, and began to jerkily twist his legs. His heart then started beating and his body warped, returning unnaturally from the kingdom of the dead.

  I felt a slight head spin and leaned on the wall; my vision suddenly grew clear, and the ringing in my ears ceased. My dead butler didn't constantly need help. He had more than enough power of his own. The sensation of owing was what kept him from the grave. That feeling beat like his heart's otherworldly twin, and I had only to give him the initial impulse to embody this power in images impressed in his memory, nothing more. For a person with such a vivid imagination, that isn't hard.

  It's no Christ and Lazarus, just an illustrious aristocrat with an uncommon talent and his servant, who is trapped in a state somewhere between life and death.

  "Thank you, Viscount," Theodor exhaled, confidently standing to his feet and telling me: "They've taken your guest."

  "Who?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

  "Two boys, a red-head and another with brown hair. The brown haired one chewed tobacco."

  "I see," I sighed and went up to my bedroom.

  Jimmy and Billy would pay dearly for sneaking into my house. It didn't matter what killed them, me or the curse; in any case, they wouldn't survive the night. The inspector must have known about that when he sent them after Elizabeth-Maria.

  In the bedroom, I grabbed the Roth-Steyr from my bedside table and pulled the head of the bolt all the way back; a moment later, the bolt had returned to its place, a round having chambered with a juicy metallic clang. Fastening my pistol holster onto my belt, I buttoned my suspenders. Without them, I risked being caught with my pants down. I checked the Cerberus in my jacket pocket and went down to the first floor.

  "And don't forget to clean up my bedroom," I reminded my butler, who was fixing his mutton chops in front of the mirror.

  "Of course not, Viscount," Theodor nodded, his facial expression now so neutral that you would never suspect he had been lying on the floor with a hole in his head just five minutes earlier.

  Although, the bullet going through his head wasn't the worst he'd had to live through, or to be more accurate, not live through. The Diabolic Plague didn't kill quite as mercifully as fifteen grams of lead and copper.

  6

  I REACHED THE JUDEAN QUARTER on foot. I walked without too much hurry, already thinking over my next steps. Again and again, I would choose words and arguments capable of solving the issue with no bloodshed. But, to be honest, I already had no hope that such an outcome was even possible.

  Inspector White never stopped half way, but I wasn't planning on going on his mission and betting my own soul in someone else's game.

  Elizabeth-Maria?

  Oh sure, the inspector knew perfectly how to catch someone alive. But he made a big mistake when he decided that he would be able to force me to dance to his tune so easily.

  And through the flap of my jacket, I felt for my pistol holster.

  We'll see yet who comes out on top. We'll see...

  AS COULD HAVE BEEN EXPECTED, the barber shop greeted me with a locked door. I stood on its porch, observing the day-to-day life of the local inhabitants. Then, I cracked open the gate and began walking cautiously into the narrow passage between buildings. There, I removed my dark glasses and took a listen, but I couldn't hear anything clearly in the indistinct din.

  I started getting scared. Scared and very lonely.

  But not for long. Feeling the weight of the Roth-Steyr in my hand allowed me to get myself together and return my confidence in my own powers.

  The inspector needed me, but I didn't need him.

  Quite a small advantage.

  There was no one in the back yard. With a pistol in my hand, I approached the flung-wide doors of the barber shop and looked inside. There was no one there.

  I threw a sugar-drop into my mouth at random. It was lemon. The only lemon drop in the whole tin. A bit of luck.

  "How sour..." I frowned, carefully crossing the threshold.

  Trying not to make a sound, I reached the stairs down to the basement and froze, not knowing whether to keep going.

  "You know where," I heard the note repeated in my head. And I actually did know; know that I could never force myself to take the next step.

  If I am fated to die a death not my own, it will happen in a basement.

  What makes me so sure? Just a feeling. It's not for nothing that I cannot bear these dark holes...

  Then again, I had Elizabeth-Maria waiting down below, which meant I had nothing to be afraid of this time.

  Onward!

  I dried my sweat-covered face with my handkerchief and began going down the stairs, doing nothing to try to mask my arrival. It would have been pointless anyway. I figured I'd never catch my colleagues unawares, so there was no reason to even try.

  And I was right – as soon as I'd taken a step into the kerosene-lamp-lit basement, a cry immediately rang out:

  "Hands!" and Jimmy stepped out of the dark corner with his carbine at the ready.

  Billy emerged from somewhere else on the other side and demanded:

  "Pistol! On the ground! Now!"

  I let their orders go in one ear and out the other.

  "Where's the girl?" I asked, my Roth-Steyr still gripped tight in my lowered hand.

  Jimmy cleared his throat, spit his phlegm under my feet and whispered:

  "If you don’t stop pointing that thing..."

  "Stop!" his partner brought him down a peg. On his round face, there was an incomprehensible half-smile half-smirk playing around. "Stop, Jimmy! Don't rush it. And you, Leo, don't go looking for trouble. Let's start over from the beginning."

  Billy seemed far too cool-headed for the situation he was in; that put me off guard and made it hard to concentrate. It made for a big contrast with his red-headed friend standing opposite him. Jimmy was positively squirming up the wall.

  "As far as I’m concerned, this guy’s already in hell!" he exclaimed. "If he makes a move, I'll put a hole right through him!"

  "And what would the inspector say about that?" I asked with a smirk, curious.

  "I'd say that with your leg shot through, you'd become a good bit more talkative!" rang out then from a hole in the wall. A moment later, Inspector White stepped out of the darkness that grew there. He was holding Elizabeth-Maria in front of himself, pressing the barrels of his Hydra to the girl’s head to stay on the safe side. "Don't do anything stupid, Leo. Drop your pistol. I just wanna have a chat."

  "My dear, how are you feeling?" I asked, ignoring the inspector.

  "I could be better," said Elizabeth-Maria pointedly, pulling at the belt of the robe she'd been dragged out of the house in. "But you could fix this all easily..."

  "Enough chit-chat!" Jimmy cut the girl off, sneezed, turned his head from side to side and demanded: "Weapon! On the ground! Chop chop!"

  "Inspector," I tried to appeal to the voice of reason. "I suggest we all go our separate ways as friends. You don't force me to free the fallen one, and I won't tell the administration. If you want, I'll quit my job. We'll just go our separate ways, like ships passing in the night."

  "No, Leo." Robert White could only laugh in reply. "I'm not missing my chance!"

  All his immovability turned out to have been put on. In fact, he was trembling worse than Jimmy, who could
n't find his place and could have burst out at any second. Billy seemed like a hermit who'd achieved enlightenment in comparison.

  What was up with him? He should have been shaking from the Diabolic Plague already!

  "You are possessed!" I turned to the inspector again. "The fallen one has gotten inside your head! And he's spinning you around however he likes, can't you see?"

  "Leopold," my boss only smiled in reply, "would you like me to have Jimmy shoot you through the leg?"

  "It's long overdue!" The red-headed constable grinned with a satisfied look.

  "Do you know what your problem is, Jimmy?" I then sighed. After he gave a confused smirk, I said: "Your problem is that you're already dead. And Billy's dead too. You really shouldn't have sneaked into my house!"

  "Don't force my hand, Leo," Robert White said with a threatening tone. "You'd better not make me..."

  I turned to him and grinned back:

  "It is you, Robert, who are forcing my hand. I could easily imagine your premature end!"

  "Nonsense!" the inspector furrowed his brow. "I have no fear of death! What I'm really afraid of is obscurity! Your talent is powerless to harm me. You can't do a thing, Leo! Not a thing!"

  "Are you sure of that?" I asked. "I beg to differ, inspector! For example, I could imagine that it is now deep in the night."

  "And you think that would scare me?"

  "Not you. And not scare. Jimmy, Billy, are you listening? It's already night. Deep in the night!"

  The red-headed constable immediately started into a heart-rending cough, leaned against the wall and started just crawling along the floor. But it was as if Billy simply hadn't heard me. He was staring at his friend looking baffled when he asked:

  "Jimmy, what is this? Jimmy!"

  "Do you see what it's like to have a fire inside you?" I said, intensifying the curse. "It's burning straight through you, trying to burst out!"

  With horror, Jimmy stared at his palms – they began to light up crimson with an internal glow, as if the constable had placed a powerful electric torch behind them. That then gave way to pustules that began quickly forming on the burn sites. Not only on his arms, but on his neck and face as well. The red-head was cowering in terrifying spasms and began rolling around the floor in an epileptic fit. Next, his body started glowing all over in a blinding luster and went limp. His corpse, cooked from the inside, was lying spread-eagle on the well-trodden earth.