Yours,
Pearsall
August 28, 1894
My Dear Pearsall,
Kings’ sons may not grow under hedges, but what about the descendant of a scholar and an earl? My wife is of noble lineage, though now disowned because of her marriage to me. Her family considered a lowly scholar to be little better than one in trade. But though they have cut all social ties, they cannot cut the ties of blood. Before our marriage my wife was accounted a great beauty and a wit, though of a markedly volatile temper and inclined to be fanciful.
She is due to bear our first child in September and she finds her condition onerous. I can with great ease convince her to depart Oxford for the Yorkshire moors on the pretext of rest. Tell me you grasp the thrust of my plan—such research as ours must not be hindered!
- J.D.
Telegram sent from Pickering Station, Yorkshire on August 30, 1894
Bring her at once. All will be ready.
Pearsall
The Dales Press Ledger, October 22, 1894
Reports reach us of a tragic fire that consumed the north wing of Whitmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. A hot dry summer and the remoteness of the location appear to have contributed to the severity of the fire. Twelve inmates lost their lives in the blaze. Among the deceased were a Mr. Jonah Donwald, his wife, Mrs. Donwald, and their newly delivered, but as yet un-christened, infant son. Mrs. Donwald, nee Miss Honoria Finchley, was the daughter of the late Lord Rampurlane, third Earl Ferrers. It is not clear why Mr. and Mrs. Donwald had come to Whitmoor, but surviving employees of the asylum inform us that Mr. Donwald appeared to be a close personal friend of the Reverend Dr. Arthur A. Pearsall, Director of the institution. Dr. Pearsall described the fire as “a regrettable setback, but an instructive one.”
Ghosts and Sands
Jay Requard
Whether it was by a hiss of the wind or her shadow briefly blocking the doorway of his tomb, Conjer always knew when she arrived. In the thirty years since he had killed her vampire lover, Emma had never gone a whole day without visiting.
Thirty years.
It was a strange thing, knowing time. Before she had come along, Conjer had cared little for the passing of the seasons, only that he marched out to claim the souls of those willing to part with their essence in exchange for his service, a payment he never kept. It always went to his father, a god imprisoned in the darkest bowels of the world.
Before Emma, there were no days—just the job his mother had created him to do.
“Conjer?” she called in her melodic voice, somewhere between a song and a gentle laugh. “Are you awake?”
He did not dare to turn his head and look as she entered. He had already noticed the fragrant rosewater she used to cover the scent of blood from her feedings, a wonderful smell too reminiscent of the florid dreams of her that often plagued him when he slept. If he turned his head, he would not be able to stop looking until she left.
“I am,” he answered.
Emma walked up to the side of his mother’s stone coffin where he lay and bent over him. Curls of gold fell from beneath the rim of her black bowler, and her green eyes glittered with the fullness of immortality. Conjer remembered when they had first met, back when she was only a hostage to be rescued from the vampire Elijah, a mining baron who had wooed her into his world of luxury and power. That job had not gone so well. So there she stood, a beast just like him, yet not like him. That gleam of curiosity had remained, vibrant and raptured.
The points of her fangs peeked from behind her red lips. “Do you like my hat?”
“It’s a hat,” he said in a lifeless tone. “Did you come all the way out here to show me that?”
“Not just the hat. I brought you something.” She straightened and turned, the low hem of her navy dress flowering out in a blossom of movement. The heels of her riding boots clacked on the stone floor as she walked back to the entrance and returned with a box wrapped in brown paper. “You’ll have to get up for it, though.”
Conjer stared at the cube in her hands, awe and fear mixing in the pit of his stomach. He sat up on the stone coffin and put his bare feet on the floor. “You did it?”
“It took convincing a few of the Mesca shamans to work on it, but they understood the urgency after a while,” she said with an evil grin. “Want to see it?”
He nodded, more excited now than he had been in a long time.
Emma tore the paper away to reveal the simple pine box. She slid off the front face cover, an ingenious piece of wood beveled at the edge so it could fall into a slot, making the container look like a single block. Inside was the most important object of his thousand-year existence, the votive that held his soul. Three decayed feathers, barren of their vanes, their barbs black with age, stuck out of the small mouth of the ceramic jar, its red clay sides painted with the arcane designs his mother had mastered during her years in the dark jungles across the sea. Built around it was a cage made of ribs, taken from whatever animal or rotted kill Emma had harvested during her nights out in the endless desert. The last piece of magic tying him to his mortal coil, the damned piece of pottery had once sat with its twin in the doorway of his home. Its brother had been shattered the same night Emma had been turned in Conjer’s battle with the vampires. The world had seemed so much more dangerous afterward, leaving him to wonder when the day would come that someone figured out his weakness.
Until now.
“And I can take it anywhere?” he asked, remembering how the magic used to suck the strength from him when he was away from the tomb for too long.
Emma offered a hand. “Wanna go for a walk?”
***
They stayed outside for hours. The stars burned in a thousand points of light, sweeping across the vast blanket of black within ribbons of red and purple. The moon sat off on the horizon, pale green and half-covered in shadow. Conjer looked up at the sky, letting the dry wind bathe his rotted face. The votive inside the case hung at his side, clutched in his withered hand.
Emma stood next to him, both hands folded in front of her. Her pale skin, perfect and unmarred, gleamed in the dim moonlight. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
A deep frown creased his chapped lips. “Why?”
“Why what?” she asked.
“I murdered Elijah.”
Emma took in a deep breath, her bare shoulders rising and falling with her sigh. “Conjer... I don’t know. I just remember I woke up in your tomb. That anger didn’t come with me.”
“I don’t know when I’ll repay you.”
She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “This is enough for me.”
He went to look at her when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. A line of sand atop a dune to the east kicked up, and not by the wind. The rider on his horse turned his steed down the steep and shifting slopes in the direction of his tomb. Behind the intruder towered the outline of Hell’s Skin, the lone city at the edge of the world. A behemoth of black, it had grown since the last time Conjer had taken in its ugly sight.
“Time to go to work,” he said.
Emma followed his stare and spotted the rider. “Should we hide?”
Conjer started back for the tomb. “From a mortal?” He laughed at the notion. “The day I hide from them is the day they cut me down.”
They retreated to wait for their visitor. Without hesitation Conjer went for his mother’s coffin and pushed off the heavy stone lid. Her bare skull stared up at him, smooth and yellowed by the centuries of dry desert air. He pulled a long iron machete from her skeletal hand and then grasped her head, feeling the potent evil swell under his palm.
“Where did you put your old clothes?” Emma asked, searching the single chamber’s darkened corners.
He held up his blade. “I’ve got all I need.”
“You can’t just stand there naked.
It ruins the ambience. Ah, here they are.” She tossed over a pair of ratty black pants and old riding boots, followed by a threadbare shirt, an ankle-length jacket, and a wide-brimmed hat her father had given Conjer long ago, reminders of their failed deal. He dressed quickly and when he was done Emma walked around him once, picking off bits of debris and brushing the dust from the front of the jacket’s leather lapels.
“Just like I remember.” She stepped back into the shadows near the door just before a figure stepped into the entrance, a rapier in his hand.
“H-hello?” the rider called. He was brown-eyed and brown-haired, and sweat beaded his forehead as he peered into the dark. His dust-covered body trembled with each step he took, and when he had gotten far enough inside Conjer stepped forward.
“Well, well.” Crossing both arms, the flat of the machete lay against his left shoulder, its pitted surface caught in the scant light of the moon beaming in from the open roof. The rider jumped back with a scream, his sword raised. Conjer glowered as he closed the distance, halting just out of the mortal’s reach. “We got business, or you just tired of life?”
“You’re real,” the rider cried, his jaw slack in terror. “The mayor said you were, but I didn’t believe. I just didn’t—”
“I take it you were sent.”
The rider bobbed his head, a frightened nod. “I’m Jed Tandish. I’m from Hell’s Skin.”
“I don’t give a shit about who you are. Why are you here?”
“There’s a man in the city,” Jed stammered, slowly lowering his sword.
“There’s a bunch of men there. Get to the point, mortal. I’m getting itchy for my peace and quiet.” Conjer let his weapon fall from his shoulder and bat down Jed’s blade, knocking it from the man’s grasp. “You want me to kill someone?”
The first tears fell from Jed’s eyes, leaving wet trails on his shaven face. “We want you to save us.”
Conjer hesitated, staying the urge to strike out and take the man’s head off. “Save you?”
“There’s a necromancer. He calls himself ‘The Hangman.’ He’s killing everyone.” Jed sobbed as he dropped to his knees, his hands pressed together to beg. “Please, don’t kill me. The mayor said you could name your price. He said you could have anything you wanted if you just went and talked to him. Please!”
“A necromancer.” Conjer tapped the side of his wiry leg with the machete. Emma looked at him from the shadows beside the door. Concern still plastered her heart-shaped face. “Haven’t dealt with one of those since Momma...You bring a horse, Jed of Hell’s Skin? Is he sand-worthy?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Conjer,” Jed replied. “The mayor wanted you to know that the guards won’t attack you. They know you’re coming.”
“Oh, do they?” Conjer asked. He waved Jed to leave. “Wait outside.”
The mortal ran, leaving behind his fallen weapon.
Emma emerged from her hiding place, pulling at the corners of her fine black gloves. “You’re going?”
“Not every day that you get a mayor calling on you.” Conjer stuck the machete in his wide belt. “A whole bunch of them are already dead at this point, I reckon. Might as well make something off of that.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“Whoever this ‘Hangman’ is, he’s just another sorcerer made of flesh and blood.” Conjer retreated to his bed and took both the votive box and his mother’s skull. He gazed into where her bright brown eyes had once been, now empty voids. His long nails dug into the bone of her crown. “I know how to deal with sorcerers.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Emma glanced over her shoulder at the tomb’s entrance. “What should I do?”
“Young Jed is going to have to stay here while I ride to town. It should be sun-up when I get there, and I don’t want him left alone to wander around in here.” He made for the door and stopped in front of her, thinking for a moment before a smile formed. “Emma?”
“Yes, Conjer?”
“You hungry?”
***
The grit of the sand carried on the hot wind collected in the corners of Conjer’s eyes, making each blink scratch the withered orbs. Already at the outskirts of Hell’s Skin, he struggled not to whoop in joy at the feeling of complete freedom as dawn warmed the horizon. He had wedged the box into one of the saddlebags. The strength in his limbs, the clarity of knowing that his power would not wane over the days he might be away from his tomb—it was more than anything he could ask for in his ancient, brutal existence.
Hell’s Skin had grown in the decades since his last visit. The one to two-level buildings had grown to three and four-levels, homes of wood and glass and molding. The streets were paved in fresh flagstones instead of hoof-beaten dirt, and at each corner stood the strangest thing he had ever seen, a tower of iron with an encased oil lamp on the top. Fresh paint coated the fronts and sides of buildings in hues of muted red and green, or bright shades of blue and yellow. The old windows he remembered in many of the storefronts had been changed, no longer plates of hazy glass, but panes so clear they seemed to not even be there at all.
Yet a few things remained.
Prostitutes prowled each street corner in search of a fresh customer to take back to the many bars and bordellos while their handlers tried to sell the desert’s flora, concoctions meant to heighten the pleasure the flesh-and-blood products offered. But something did not seem right to Conjer as he trotted down the main road on his horse. The navy-coated Guards, the city’s appointed defenders, were not out to police the uncouth rabble they often tried to keep from common sight. Passing by shuttered homes along the way, Conjer watched their inhabitants part their wooden-slat shades to check on him as he went by. The few stares that dared meet his did not hold the level of fear or terror he expected in his coming.
Instead they held relief.
A group of the city’s Guard gathered at the iron gate of the mayor’s home. Four stood on the flat-top wall around the decaying compound while ten more massed below them, their long swords at the ready as they formed into a line to receive him.
Conjer stopped a few feet away. Staring at the lead man of their apex, a tall and strapping young sort with curly hair and a black handlebar mustache, he drew back the left side of his coat and revealed the handle of his machete. “You boys got a problem?”
“You talk?” the lead man inquired, his eyes glued on Conjer’s face. “You ain’t one of The Hangman’s ghosts, are you?”
“Afraid not.” He let his hand hover near his weapon. “I was sent here on the word of a mortal named Jed. Any of you boys know him?”
“You’re that thing out in the dunes.”
“I hear your mayor wants to see me.”
They took Conjer into City Hall. The red walls of the hallway had been repainted since the last time he had been there, now a garish teal color while the ceiling was painted over in eggshell. The hardwood floors were still there, though the years of neglect had left them scuffed with boot marks. The Guard formed a square around him as they marched to a sitting room with an empty fireplace and a pair of well-kept leather chairs.
In one of the chairs sat a young man, thin and hook-nosed. His black hair fell down and almost covered his eyes before he swept it back with a white-gloved hand. “Come in, Mr. Conjer,” he called, motioning him to the second chair. “Welcome to Hell’s Skin. I don’t think anyone has ever paid you that sort of courtesy.”
“Never asked for it.” Conjer walked around the empty chair and stood at its side. The mayor looked up at him, his tired eyes circled in exhaustion and surrender. “But there is courtesy in a name.”
“Ah, forgive me. John Hollitack. My father was in the employ of Elijah MacKenn before you dealt with the late baron. He never did get to express his thanks. Not that it matters now.”
“True.” Conjer took his seat. “We have business in the here and the now.”
/> The young mayor glanced to the empty fireplace. “Did you kill Jed Tandish, the young man I sent to call upon you?”
“He was alive last time I saw him.”
“He’s a good sort,” said Hollitack. “I wish I had built a city where young men like him could have grown into their own powers, free from the bonds of poverty that have chained them for so long.”
“I truly don’t give a shit,” Conjer replied, bored at the mortal’s musing.
“Fair enough. I imagine Jed told you of the necromancer?”
“He did.”
“I would like this terrorizer disposed of as soon as possible. I have lost too many of the Guard going after him, and now the city is flooded with ghosts.”
Conjer leaned forward, elbows on knees. “He raises ghosts?”
“I have seen him do it myself, when he first arrived. “Hollitack brushed off his lap, his stare far away. “His demand was clear—‘this city, this desert, it is all mine now.’ And then he killed my personal Guardsmen and...”
“Again, it doesn’t matter,” said Conjer, cutting him off. “You know my price?”
Hollitack darkened, his eyes glazing over in anger as he straightened in his seat. The tips of his fingers dug into the arms of his chair, pinning the polished red leather into tight depressions. For a moment his mouth screwed into a sneer. “One soul for one deed, taken into your darkness. The Mesca told me that much before they fled for their hills and tribal lands. I offer you mine.”
The Big Bad II Page 16