by Frank Tuttle
Evis shrugged. “Not a damned thing. Should it?”
“Probably not.” I stood. I was beginning to ache and stiffen, as if I’d been struck, though I couldn’t recall any of the men on the stairs actually landing a blow.
“I should go home now,” I said.
Evis nodded, grave as any barn owl.
“I should let it go.”
“You wouldn’t have come here if that was your intention.”
I paced.
“So what is it you want, Markhat?”
“I don’t know. Let me think.”
Evis tilted his head, puzzled. “That was your cue to say ‘I want another beer.’ Do you have a fever?”
My hands slipped into my pockets. I still carried the damp collar. I fingered it, felt blood on the tiny brass nameplate, and the shadows of Evis’s office became the shadows down deep in the tunnels.
“I want a barrel of gunpowder,” I said. “Maybe two. The most potent stuff you’ve got.”
Evis blew a smoke ring.
“Just to be clear. You want me to just hand over a dangerous volume of high explosives because you intend to destroy a block or so of private property in an act of ill-considered vengeance. You are entirely unconcerned that doing so might provoke the wrath of one if not more criminal organizations, all on behalf of a deceased canine. Is that correct?”
“More or less.”
Evis grinned. He grinned a wet, toothy, vampire grin, and then he swung his polished boots up on his desk, scattering papers and sending scrolls rolling and falling in every direction.
“Tell me about this warehouse we’re going to blow up,” he said. “Tell me all the hell about it.”
The thing about Avalante is this—they’re always thinking ahead.
Evis claims they spend three-quarters of their wealth on pure research. Just a handful of the things I’ve seen in the secret halls that wind ever deeper beneath House Avalante proper tell me he’s speaking the truth.
But of all the deadly wonders I’ve spied over the years, the big, clean thing Evis called a whirlpool bath may be the most amazing.
I lay in it while my blood-soaked clothes were being laundered. Evis was off too, on a mission to purloin what he claimed was a new explosive mixture so powerful we’d be able to carry enough in a satchel to blow Mr. Chuckles and his warehouse to Heaven and well beyond.
I splashed hot water. My chest was turning the blue-black of new bruises. There was a shallow, six-inch gash on my right forearm.
The trio on the stairs had landed a few blows after all. I hadn’t felt a thing. Rage does that to you.
It also gets you killed.
I shoved the thought aside and slipped under the water and let the warmth do its work.
When I surfaced, Evis was there. His eyes were hidden behind dark spectacles. The dead white skin of his hands was covered by supple, black gloves.
He smiled, not bothering to hide his wet, vampire teeth.
“Have you devised a clever stratagem for placing the explosives in the warehouse without provoking a confrontation?”
I stood, grabbed a towel.
“Nope.”
“So we just walk in, stepping over the leavings of your last visit.”
“We can tiptoe, if you think that will help.”
Evis shrugged. I swear his smile got wider.
“You’re being awfully cooperative in something that doesn’t have a damned thing to do with lining Avalante’s pockets,” I said, drying off.
“I have my reasons. I also have twelve pounds of an explosive so violently potent we never store more than half an ounce within five hundred feet of any other half ounce.” He pointed to a battered leather satchel sitting by the door. “Did I mention it’s also extremely unstable?”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” I pulled a borrowed shirt down over my head, searched the neat pile of clothes on a shelf for a dark pair of trousers. “How do we set it off?”
“A good loud sneeze might do it. But with luck, we just light the fuse and run.” Evis pushed his dark specs back on his nose and gave me the eye. “It’s a four-minute fuse. Think you can run five blocks in four minutes, or should I add a half hour to it?”
“Ha ha. Vampire humor. Never gets old.” I sat on the edge of the tub, pulled on socks, and shoved my feet into shiny leather shoes.
“Not too late to change your mind,” said Evis.
I stood. The shoes fit perfectly. I scooped the dog collar off the chair and shoved it in my pocket. I wasn’t trying to read the name inscribed on the bloodied brass plate, but I saw it anyway.
Peaches.
“Oh, it’s too damned late,” I said. Evis shrugged and picked up the satchel, taking care to move slowly and deliberately.
He let me open the door. We strolled out of Avalante smiling and talking, and if Jerle or anyone else knew what horror lurked in our satchel they never let it show.
A sleek, black cab was waiting at the curb. The driver was human. The fresh, black paint was noticeably lacking in the usual Avalante insignia.
We climbed inside. Evis held the satchel just above the cab’s polished oak floor.
We rolled away, and neither of us breathed a word until the stink of the docks told us we’d arrived.
The explosive wasn’t quite as unstable as Evis believed. That or Morgus—the Angel of Fools—walked with us that day.
Twice, drunken stevedores barged into Evis. When both moments passed without explosions, I wondered briefly just how drunk one had to be to stumble into a black-clad halfdead in the middle of the street.
We made quick work of the short walk from the cab to the whitewashed bricks that marked the mouth of the alley. Once in the shadows, Evis regained his catlike, halfdead gait, and I let out a small sigh of relief.
If the illustrious Chuckles or his employers had sent reinforcements to the warehouse in response to my visit, Evis would find them long before they saw the first hint of his black silk robes.
We traveled the whole alley unmolested, though. When we reached the door, it was ajar.
“Did you leave it open?” asked Evis in a whisper.
“No. I closed it.” I aimed the snout of my revolver into the shadows.
Evis sniffed the air. “Blood has been spilled here.”
“I was in a mood.”
He shook his head. “No. Copious amounts of blood. From six, perhaps seven individuals. You fought three. Correct?”
“Three.”
“Hold this.” He pressed the satchel in my left hand, and was gone—quick as a ghost, just as silent.
I counted to ten. The sounds of mayhem failed to issue from the yawning dark.
Evis reappeared, adjusting his glasses.
“You are sure you only faced three?”
“Hell, I’m no mathematician, but I can count.”
“Come then.” He vanished again, leaving me with the satchel.
I stepped into the dark.
The smell of blood, fresh and tangy, hit me a single step beyond the door. I paused long enough to let my eyes adjust.
The first thing I saw was a pair of booted feet lying just outside the light.
Another minute revealed the crumpled body in its gruesome entirety. The man’s neck had been broken. He lay what should have been face down on the floor, but his head was twisted so far around, his wide and staring eyes were pointed at the ceiling.
Another body lay beside him, a hatchet buried in its skull.
Yet another corpse lay a few steps away. Another beyond that.
Evis glided up the stairs.
“I found eight more down there,” he said. “All armed. Two bore firearms. Is there any small detail of your previous visit you may have, purely by accident of course, neglected to include?”
“I’m not sure I killed anyone,” I said. “And if I did, it was only one man. Maybe two. But no more.”
“Ah. Then it seems you missed a massacre by a matter of an hour. Lucky you.”
Evis grinned. “I suggest we place the explosives downstairs. The blast should be sufficient to bring down the entire structure.” His grin softened. “You need not descend. I can see to the placement, if you wish.”
“I could use the exercise.” I made my way through the bodies, careful not to let my shiny, new shoes slip on any of the dark, wet patches on the floor. “You have any idea what did this?”
“Interesting you should use the term what rather than who,” said Evis as he fell in beside me. “I counted five rounds fired from a rather inferior pair of handguns. They didn’t stop whomever or whatever did this.”
“Halfdead?”
“No. The blood is untouched. The nature of the injuries is inconsistent with those inflicted by my kin.”
We reached the stairs, skirted the fallen, made our way down into the dark.
“A wand-waver, you think?”
The slim halfdead shrugged beneath his silks. “I see none of the usual hallmarks of an arcane attack,” he said. “Although with wand-wavers, anything is possible.”
We reached the foot of the stairs. I did not look at my blood-soaked overcoat, or the still, small shape beneath it.
We walked for a time. I let Evis lead the way. Finally, he stopped, kicked at the damp earth with the toe of his hundred-crown boot, and grunted.
“This should do.”
I lowered the satchel carefully to the ground. Evis let out his breath in a hiss, stopped, and did things with his gloved hands.
“That’s that,” he said, straightening. His grin was back. “Last one out is a rapidly expanding cloud of fine red mist.”
And damned if he didn’t take off giggling.
I charged after, not wasting the breath it would take to cuss. I caught one brief glimpse of Evis, robes flapping, ascending the stairs like a dainty, overgrown crow.
Then I was alone in the dark.
I ran. I ran like I hadn’t run in years. I ran like I did that awful night the lines broke at One Tree Hill, ran like I heard the war cries of a thousand Trolls roll like ground-born thunder at my back. I took the stairs three at a time, managed not to trip on any of the tangled bodies, managed to burst through the door and charge through the narrow alley and keep running, heart pounding in my chest, vision going red from lack of breath.
I was still running when the satchel exploded and the street beneath me buckled and heaved and every window in every storefront and bar for ten blocks shattered from the mere sound. I was still running when I heard the first pop-pop-pop and saw the first of the thousands of airborne bricks come arcing down from the sky to shatter on the buckled cobblestones.
I was still running when Evis pulled me under an awning and into a terrified fishmonger’s stall, away from the rain of masonry and lumber outside.
“I told you it was potent,” said Evis, his face split in a gleeful halfdead smile.
I watched people scatter, watched the rain of debris come crashing down.
“For you, Peaches,” I said. “Rest easy now.”
Evis had the good grace not to ask.
Later, we joined the curious throngs out in the street.
Watch wagons rolled hither and yon. Blue-capped Watchmen charged up this street or down the other, blowing their whistles and bellowing orders and generally making a damned fine show of bluster and aimless determination. Every conversation offered wild speculation as to the cause of the blast and wholly inaccurate opinions as to its nature and source.
A tall, leaning column of smoke still billowed from the location of the warehouse we had so hurriedly vacated. People shielded their eyes against the afternoon sun and watched smoke rise and spread.
Evis could hardly contain his glee.
“I’ll bet you ten crowns the hole is fifty feet deep,” he whispered, wary of the ring of curious onlookers that maintained a careful distance from him. “Hell, make that sixty feet.” He rubbed his gloved hands together. “And that’s from the rejected batch.”
I nodded but didn’t take the bet. My ears were still ringing from the blast, and the cobbles beneath my feet were all loose and uneven from the shock.
Evis made no suggestion that we head back to Avalante. He hadn’t even insisted on hiding in the darkest corner of a deserted bar. I decided Evis wanted word to get out that a rare, daytime halfdead was roaming the docks right after the explosion, and then I decided that if I was right, I didn’t want to pursue that line of speculation even a single step further.
“So much for walled cities,” I noted.
Evis chuckled. “Don’t be so glum. You got what you wanted, after all.”
“Seems you did too.”
“I have no idea what you mean, but if I did, I would merely acknowledge a rare and happy convergence of disparate goals. Now then. I believe you mentioned something about a late-night meeting, suggested by an anonymous note?”
I watched street kids snatch up anything shiny amid the debris while bellowing Watchmen tried to disperse them with kicks and clubs.
“Hell with that. It’s a set-up. If the note sender really wanted my money, they’d have hiked to my door.”
Evis nodded. “Obviously.”
“I’ll let the Watch Captain Holder keep that meeting, if he’s interested.” I folded my arms over my chest. “No, I think I’ll pay this Chuckles fellow a visit instead.” There was even a good chance, I reflected, that Mr. Chuckles was the one who’d sent the invitation.
“Mr. Chuckles may be less than hospitable if he decides you are the party responsible for redistributing his dog-fighting operation over eight city blocks. Not to mention a goodly number of what was presumably his staff.”
I shrugged. “I can find my own way home. Thanks for the party. I owe you one, and then some.”
Evis bristled beneath his silk and his glasses.
“Nonsense. I haven’t had this much fun in years.” One slender hand vanished beneath the black silk and reappeared with a pair of familiar cigars. “Shall we find some shade and wait for dusk?”
“Are you ever going to tell me what the hell has gotten into you?”
He didn’t smile.
“Are you?”
“There’s a place a block away,” I said. “No windows. Smells like the devil’s own latrine.”
Evis clipped the ends off the Lowland Sweets. “Sounds amusing,” he said. “Lead the way.”
Chapter Six
Neither Evis nor I touched our thin, sour beers.
Instead, we smoked and waited. The barkeep glared at us the whole time. The place was empty because of Evis. Thirsty patrons stumbled through the bar’s doors and stumbled out just as quickly when they spied Evis lurking in the corner. Ordinarily, I’d have tossed the barkeep a crown or two to make up for the loss, but it wasn’t a charitable kind of day.
Evis didn’t speak. Only his occasional pulls at his cigar let me know he was still awake. I followed suit.
Watch whistles kept blowing outside. We heard the peal of Fire Brigade bells. Muffled conversations just outside the door hinted at a hole in the ground ‘as deep as the High House is tall.’
That was the only time Evis looked alert, smiling his toothy, smug smile.
We were both on our second cigar when a tall blonde in a tight, red skirt marched in.
The brim of her fashionable day hat covered her face, but not the ends of her long, golden curls. She stopped right where all the others had, turned on her heel, and hurried back out into the street.
I let her go. Evis puffed away but didn’t otherwise stir.
“Going to see a man about a horse,” I said. The barkeep snorted. I rose and put on my hat. “Be right back.”
Catching up to Gertriss only took a block. She helped by lingering at a storefront, although I could just as easily have followed the stares aimed her way by male passersby.
She saw me coming and strolled into a loud, busy fish-market
a few fronts down. I followed and found her waiting in a relatively quiet corner of the malodorous place.
“Boss,” she whispered. She took a half step forward, as though wanting to hug, but stopping herself short. “Damn, boss, we were sure you were dead.”
“Not even a little bit,” I replied. “And who’s we?”
“Mama. Darla. Three-leg. The Watch is all over the office. Mama has half the street kids on the far side of the Brown out looking for you. I’m so glad to see you I could hug you, but I won’t.”
I nodded. The Watch knew I was interested in the warehouse. I hadn’t yet decided how Holder would play it, when confronted with a smoking crater decorated with bits of viscera. A long sojourn in the Old Ruth on my part certainly wasn’t out of the question, even with Avalante’s objections.
“Well, you can call off Mama’s army of urchins. I’m fine. Evis is fine. We’re just having a smoke and waiting for dusk.”
“Like hell you are. I heard the blast all the way in East town. And then there’s this.”
She reached into her trim, leather purse, pushed aside the butt of a sleek, black pistol, and withdrew a ragged sheet of brown butcher’s paper.
“Buttercup drew this.”
I unfolded it.
I’d seen Buttercup’s little banshee hands doodle on scraps of Mama’s butcher paper before. Buttercup might be a thousand years old, but her scribblings are so clumsy and childish you’d never suspect her age when confronted by her art.
Until I saw her latest work, that is.
No stick figures. No big, loopy flowers scrawled beneath a wobbly sun.
Buttercup had drawn me.
I was sitting in the dark, a bundle across my lap. My face was downcast, my shoulders slumped.
Behind me was a heap of dogs.
And behind that, shapes scurried. Somehow, using only a few lines here and there, Buttercup had captured motion without depicting form. Figures moved, shuffling, gathering, but shuffling and gathering without revealing any details of their nature.
All, that is, save one.
One hulking silhouette towered above the rest. The man, if man it was, emerged from the ranks of shadows, arms outstretched, hands like hooks reaching out toward my unguarded back.