DEVIL’S ROW

by Serafini, Matt

  “Lick me,” she snarled, her demand devoid of patience.

  If Sebastian’s body still ached, adrenaline didn’t allow him to feel it. He dove at the altar of flesh, angling so that he could taste everything.

  His tongue ran along her legs, prolonging the moment so to tease them both. Her soft skin pleased his mouth, and eager hands explored her shape, massaging her rounded cheeks and tracing her thighs before trailing down to her ankles.

  His fingers sliced against curved talons where feet should’ve been.

  Sebastian screamed and recoiled, scampering to the bed’s corner. Bird-like feet clasped together in an effort to hasten his retreat. Her head pivoted to face him while her body remained in a forward-facing position on all fours.

  In between dangling stands of greasy hair, her eyes were emblazoned like hot coal.

  The room stunk of vinegar now. Her body cracked and aligned naturally beneath her immobile and glaring head. Green liquid spattered against her thighs and spilled down her muscles with sticky consistency.

  She launched up and managed to get above him, her legs somehow twice as long then. Sebastian crawled between her in an attempt to escape, as the purulent fluid smacked the sides of his face and lips. He winced and got a mouthful of her juices, filling his throat with runny, chunky liquid that tasted like pub vomit.

  He couldn’t do anything but puke it back, falling off the bed and gagging for any taste beyond the one littering his tongue.

  A witch’s laughter boomed, so loud and unpleasant that Sebastian would’ve covered his ears if he weren’t desperate to scrub his mouth. He rose from the puddle of runny fluids, hacking up into his arm. His pistols were on the floor wrapped in his littered clothes. He grabbed for the gun and jammed its barrel into Tulcea’s bloodied face.

  She found this gesture hilarious, crowing as she became the shadows. There was only the sound of her breathing then, rough and labored.

  Garrick came through the doorway in that instant, tearing away the obstructing flap. There was light now, and Sebastian gasped when he found the woman tucked into the farthest corner between the bed and wall. Her jaw distended almost to the floor, dripping with green mucus while her liver-spotted flesh looked like spoiled beef. The pruned hag grumbled at the unwelcome exposure.

  “Enough!” The hunter cried and lifted his blade. She might’ve shrieked in the instant before it broke through her skull, but the hit was followed by a crunch that shot all the way up the mine. The witch dropped like a sack of wet garbage and the hunter seized her wispy white hair, dragging her with his fist.

  Sebastian didn’t miss a beat, taking her by the curled feet, aware of the shoulder pain but ignoring it in favor of removing this blight. They hurried into the mine’s entry chamber. Timothy was sprawled across the floor, a wooden goblet of spilt wine beside him.

  They swung the body to and from a few times to gather momentum before tossing her atop the roaring flame.

  She sprung to life then, thrashing and screaming as the hungry fire accepted her. Her hands closed around hot embers that caused her palms to hiss as she struggled to escape.

  Garrick lifted his gun and sunk two shots into her skull.

  All was quiet then, save for the trailing sizzles of roasted witch. Sebastian dropped onto the bench slab, drained once more, hacking mucus in an effort to forever cleanse his throat of the poison.

  The smell of cooked flesh and the taste of foul bodily fluids were trapped inside his head. He pinched his nose and lifted a smoked torch from its sconce, relighting it over the shriveling corpse. He wanted as much light as possible in here.

  “Bloody hell,” he said.

  “Best you don’t question it.” Garrick’s words were spoken with experienced matter-of-factness. It was easy to forget his trade sometimes. He had seen this kind of thing before.

  Timothy’s stomach rose and fell. Sebastian was glad to find him alive.

  “He’s fine,” Garrick said. “There was never any danger for him.”

  “What was in that drink?”

  “Nothing foul, just mead. It was the song she sang upon our entrance that impacted each of us differently. Put him to sleep, awakened your need for cunny…”

  It was humiliating for Sebastian to think about how close he had come to whatever that thing had intended to do to him. Instead of dwelling on that thought, he asked how Garrick had been able to avoid her lure altogether.

  “Marks of Osiris. A life of servitude has to have a few perks.”

  Sebastian recalled the host of foreign symbols inked and carved across his torso that he’d seen at Freywald.

  Timothy stirred. In the firelight, his face was that of a constipated drunk.

  “Sorcery had a go at you, pup,” Garrick said. “Though I am positive you will think it an empty stomach or a light head.”

  The kid didn’t respond. Sebastian knew him well enough to recognize his confusion. “We cannot make camp down here,” he said.

  Garrick waved that statement down with his hand. “This is the safest place for us to stay. The creatures that call this land home are not likely to come anywhere near here…varcolac included. These witches can drum up power over anything. They spend blood and flesh like currency.”

  “Excuse me?” Timothy said.

  “Blood magic. The strigoi viu are a type of witch that uses blood and flesh to extend their lives and bend the laws of physics. It’s the only thing that matters to them. Markets all over the world are in place for these things to trade in specific bloods. Vampires, varcolac, demons…each have different potencies…different uses.”

  “You know this how?” Timothy was on his feet but looked brittle.

  “BECAUSE I USED TO COLLECT HER FUCKING TAXES.” Garrick’s scream had all the patience of an unfit mother’s.

  The kid’s silence only grew more befuddled.

  “You stupid gash. Just how would you expect that I know?”

  As Sebastian braced himself for another round of heightened tensions and sarcastic responses, his companions went silent. Garrick pulled his hood down and ran a hand through his curly red hair. With the red faded from his cheeks, he cupped his palm over Timothy’s shoulder and waited for the kid to flash an assuring nod. It was the most concern the hunter had ever shown him.

  They sat for a long time watching the witch burn, her withered body coated with black char.

  “We did imprison one once,” Garrick said. “Thing was behind a rash of child killings in Athens. Snatching victims without common bond, peasants and royals both. Seven children gone before the city turned to the order. We are an indisputable necessity, pup, whether you like it or not. I arrived there on the eve of the eighth disappearance.” Garrick paused for a moment and his face wrinkled. Sebastian was glad to see that something, anything, was capable of getting to him. “Wasn’t long before I stumbled across a baby’s tiny intestines spread out inside the Acropolis.”

  “Such evil,” Timothy muttered. He caught himself as soon as he said it and closed his mouth, as if he hadn’t intended to speak it aloud.

  Garrick seemed content to ignore him this once. “I do not think the discovery was accidental, for the creature lie in wait for me. When I caught up to her, it, whatever, in the underground, it didn’t look human, or even real. I cannot describe what I saw then, only that the green and red ink scrawled across my back protected me in the basin of that hellhole just as it did tonight. The monster wanted my blood…and more. To it, a warrior’s blood has value. I took her alive, but it was only by the grace of luck that it happened that way. An allergy to my blade and the elixir it wore struck her through the heart and reversed whatever demon’s blood she’d ingested. Much like this hag, the façade fell away, leaving a faded old woman. Transporting her wasn’t easy, but the Vatican City has means to contain any evil.”

  “You studied her?” Timothy had perked up at the implication.

  “Aye. She was the first one in captivity. That meant she was of interest. What we found was that
her dedication to dark magic was more addictive than an opium high…something she couldn’t live without. I don’t recall how long we had her, though. Felt like only days before one of the night watchers, three floors up, mind you, cut herself on an iron gate. That drop, hardly enough for the guard to notice, was all it took. It slithered its way to the witch, enabling her to assume another form. With it, she was able to deceive her way to freedom. Four of my brothers and sisters were dead before anyone knew things were amiss. I put her down with this blade and regretted ever bringing her back. The order was less upset, favoring information over destruction. Who cares that we suffered losses when the knowledge she gave us was valuable?”

  “And you continue to serve such a righteous lot,” Timothy said.

  “I serve so children like you don’t have to.”

  “Another of your failures, then.”

  “Do not think this is serving. You are surviving. Once we reach Constanta, you will go on with your life, yeah? Trying to forget the terrible things you saw. Eventually, that will happen, you realize. Once you’ve taken comfort in the arms of the right woman, sewn your seed inside of her, this…life…will be little more than an unpleasant memory for you. For me, however, it will continue as reality.”

  Sebastian drowned out their bickering by wandering back to Tulcea’s room. He continued to ache, but it felt good to be able to move around at his own pace. He examined her quarters by torchlight while Garrick’s words dogged him. Not the story about the Acropolis witch, but rather Timothy’s eventual fate. A wife and children was an optimistic outcome, considering their current lot, and if it happened to come true, he hoped to stick around long enough to see it.

  The witch’s room was a mess. There was nothing sensual in here now that her magic had worn off. That creature, the strigoi viu, had sworn an apparent oath to squalor. Spoilt bed sheets were stained every shade of dark and light. Bloody droplets pocked the floor. They led back into the corridor and down the hall—away from the main chamber.

  Sebastian followed it and Garrick picked up on his curiosity almost instantly, telling the youngest of them to stay put and shout if anyone else came down through the entrance.

  For once, Timothy didn’t contest.

  A wooden cart encrusted in brown blood sat in the connecting chamber. Splatter streaks stretched across the thin hay bed, darker than oil by torchlight. There had to be another entrance if Tulcea had gotten this thing down here.

  “There could be more of them,” Sebastian said, ashamed of the terror in his voice.

  “These things don’t dwell in hard-to-reach places because they’re itching to join a social circle.”

  Sebastian dragged the torch to a rickety table of severed limbs. Torn and grayed appendages sat alongside blood-caked blades and glass phials brimming with a spectrum of colorful liquids.

  Their missing villagers.

  A row of cages lined the outlying wall. Two young men and a woman, each imprisoned separately. They glanced up from on scraped and dirty knees. Lifting their heads looked to consume all the strength they had left. Each was nude and their bodies wore open scabs.

  “Look for a key,” Sebastian said. “We’ve got to get them out.”

  Garrick had him by the arm, shaking his head in firm refusal. His six- shooter tapped the barrel of Sebastian’s flintlock, a you know what has to be done gesture.

  Sebastian hated the implication. These prisoners were young. None looked older than Timothy. Just kids. Emaciated kids. An outfit of tight and sunken flesh separated them from their skeletons. They rustled at the noise of intruders, though it was doubtful that any of them could see.

  Vision went when starvation took hold. Back home, he watched a hundred starving families battle for twenty loaves of stale bread in the alleyways of darkest London. Those too weak to fight curled up on the sidewalk and simply wasted away.

  “Help us.” The voice was wafer frail.

  Of course they would help. The thief-taker’s oath was to defend those who couldn’t fend for themselves. That battle had now extended into a world previously unknown to him, but witches and vampires died the same as men. The rules of his game remain unchanged.

  The cages were locked, and Sebastian searched amidst the dungeon’s grisly remnants for a key.

  “You are wasting your time.” Garrick stood in the center of the cavern with his arms folded. “There is but one way to help these Godless bastards.”

  The prisoners refused to pay him any mind, focusing a chorus of hoarse pleas on Sebastian.

  “She must’ve had it on her,” he said in a frustrated sigh.

  “Yeah, where? Between her legs or up her arse? Did you taste brass when you ran your tongue across her taint?”

  “These are not our enemies…”

  Garrick sighed and walked to the cages. He shot the nearest prisoner through the eye. The teenage boy’s head lurched and the back of his skull cracked, splattering his final thoughts all over the wall behind him.

  The girl in the next cell began to growl, and Sebastian saw the onset of glowing yellow eyes mixed and swirling with whatever her natural eye color was.

  “Your girlfriend was bleeding these creatures,” Garrick said.

  The young girl’s face twisted and pointed ears took shape.

  Beside her, the boy’s expression was curious. His eyes were pained as he clasped his hands over his mouth.

  “It is no wonder Tulcea incapacitated the two of you with ease,” Garrick said. “She is working off the blood of demons.”

  The cells no longer housed teenagers. A hulking animal paced back and forth in the limited space where the girl had been. The boy on the far end hissed through extended fangs.

  “Take your gun and put that beast down,” Garrick said as he eased the torch from Sebastian’s hand. He took the fire and slipped it between two of the bars, stabbing the boy who was too weak to resist, his only defense a meek wave of his arms to stave off the flame.

  Garrick was undeterred, thrusting it forward like a spear and leaving dark stains on the skeletal flesh. The boy’s skin chapped as the torch hit him again and again. He slipped down off the wall so his back was on the floor, and then his hair caught fire.

  Sebastian watched the vampire burn, but he stopped processing everything and lapsed further into a daze. He was only vaguely aware that he held in his hand the means to kill a varcolac. Despite everything he’d seen since late August, he couldn’t get used to the sight of these shifting creatures.

  The reality was that they shared this world with devils. He found perverse comfort in that thought, because there had to be angels as well, surely. How could there be one without the other?

  As certain as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to ask Garrick for confirmation.

  If the answer is no…

  Sebastian crossed himself and took aim, deciding he didn’t like where his thoughts were leading him. His eyes held against those evil orbs dangling beyond the bars. A prayer tumbled from his mouth, but her howling stifled it and startled him into taking the shot early. The bullet crashed through the animal’s snout, a wellspring of blood pouring from her blown-out nostrils.

  The wolf regressed, leaving a naked girl shriveled in death.

  “Well done, thief-taker. This may not feel like a victory, but she is free to walk the beyond at last.”

  “There is no victory here,” Sebastian said and lowered the smoke-swirled barrel.

  “You are alive. Let that be all you need.”

  “I was barely that…”

  “The hag was not your fault.”

  “What a fool I was…”

  “The fairer sex is alluring, and that’s before you weave magic into it. You’d have an easier time getting the Whigs and Tories to see eye-to-eye than resisting her.”

  The witch-finder would say no more. He went about searching the chamber for anything of use.

  Sebastian left him to scavenge. When he returned to the large chamber, Timothy was huddled over one of
his books, staring through the pages once more. When badly shaken, the kid needed scholastic reinforcement like Sebastian demanded gin.

  Sebastian said nothing to him. He dropped onto the bench, eager to put the day away. His shoulder continued to hurt, and he cleaned it with water from the wellspring before redressing it with rags cut from his doublet.

  Soon he’d be back in London, drowning in all the gin he could drink. Ridding the streets of a criminal element he could understand. You didn’t wind up with a hard on when you chased down a pickpocket.

  “What are we reading tonight, pup?” Garrick’s fireside arrival was marked by boisterous condescension. “Tell me a bedtime story.”

  For a long while, the kid stayed silent and Sebastian thought that was for the best. However, he was excitable like any young pup. Not content to sit idle and suffer goading. Timothy cleared his throat and Sebastian rolled his eyes behind his lids.

  “This is philosophy,” the kid barked. “There’s no story to tell.”

  “Explain it to me anyway. What do you take away from all that?”

  “That religious texts are artificial and primitive. That we have to move beyond superstition and favor reason.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Locke or Hobbes to me. One favored religious tolerance, the other argued that a unified religion best served the state.”

  “Exactly. Their strongest concepts are still mired in superstition. What hope is there when even the smartest among us look to appease the man in the sky? And I still cannot believe that you know them. Have studied them.”

  “I think myself well read, you know. Enough of my life has been lived on the road, and so the warm comfort of books is known to me.”

  “And yet you seem to understand very little.”

  “Yeah? Well, someday, when there is time, we must waste more energy debating their philosophies, neither of which will ever come to pass. I wish I had the luxury of sitting around all day advocating idealistic nonsense. The world will never be what you want, you know.”

  “Never try to make it better, then? That’s your solution? Sounds like your order should forget about everything it does if that’s the case. And, so you know, that viewpoint didn’t sound like Locke or Hobbes because it’s not. It’s me.”