Black City Demon

by Richard A. Knaak

  “What’s his role?”

  “He was the first to slip away from the Court when Oberon recently made his presence known to us.”

  Now it was my turn to pause. “So . . . you knew about that or you found out afterward? Tell me it was afterward, Kravayik. I won’t believe you, but I’ll try to pretend.”

  He cleared his throat. “Sadly, no. I was informed shortly after he slipped through the Gate. One of Her Lady’s messengers.”

  I was really wondering whether my true purpose was not to guard the Gate, but rather to clean up after its whims. It seemed everything and everybody could pass through without me knowing anymore. That hadn’t been how the Gate had worked for most of its long existence before Chicago. I wondered what’d changed to make it so.

  “I’ll deal with you and that later,” I growled, feeling the rage stirring again. “You should know I’ve just come from seeing a ghost. Claudette’s ghost.” I didn’t mention my other encounter. I could be as secretive as one of the Feirie folk. Besides, I wanted to hear his reaction to the ghost.

  Kravayik made a sound I couldn’t identify save that it wasn’t a pleasant one. Then, “She . . . was a very intuitive, very adaptable human. She was strong, both in will and faith.”

  “‘Faith’? As in Heaven?”

  “As in. Master Nicholas, I have met many humans, and even you, a saint, would have come up short to the purity of faith of this incarnation . . . not to take away anything from Mistress Claryce. Claudette . . . I . . .”

  I waited. And waited some more. I could hear his breathing, which was coming rapidly now.

  I finally grew impatient. I could appreciate his loss, but not much else. “Kravayik, she warned me that the Beast’s risen and the castle stands again. She warned that both’re getting stronger.”

  “As . . . as I feared,” he finally returned.

  I threw my curveball at him. “And she apologized to me, Kravayik. To me. She knew me, Kravayik. Why would she know me? You want to tell me?”

  There was another hesitation. “She is a part of Mistress Claryce.”

  “No. She knew me. Claudette knew me. Why don’t I know her? I never met her.”

  He didn’t hesitate this time, which made me listen closely. It either meant he was planning to be entirely honest with me or he’d finally put together a satisfactory lie. Or both. He was still an elf, after all.

  “You have spoken to me of your curse, Saint George.” He was calling me “Saint George.” That couldn’t be good. He never called me “Saint George.” “You have told me over and over how you, the dragon, and she were forever bound, though why she you never understood. You only knew that she returned to you each time. No matter what city, no matter what realm, your paths always crossed.”

  So far, he hadn’t told me anything I didn’t know and everything I didn’t like to think about. “Go on.”

  “You and I . . . we had crossed paths with Oberon. You saved my life. You first revealed the truth of the Word to me, then, though it did not sink in deep until later. Until she showed me its depth. Even still, when the moment came, I felt for both your sakes, I should act.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stiffened. In my head, I could sense that he was curious. She’d been instrumental in his current situation. Anything that affected her just didn’t affect me; it affected him. “What did you do, Kravayik?”

  Another pause. If he’d been in front of me, I’d have been tempted to punch him right now. “Saint George. I sought to break the curse. When she initially crossed my path in her search for her friend, it was just as you were pursuing your own efforts against the Wyld infiltrating the exposition. She saw one of the Wyld. She saw you slay it. She’d already seen more than most humans. One way or another, the curse had again worked to bring her into your world.”

  “My world.” I hadn’t chosen this. Not willingly. “Are you getting to the point? What did you—” Then it hit me. “Kravayik . . . you didn’t . . . you didn’t tell her how this all began, did you?”

  Yet another pause. Another goddamned pause that said everything.

  “Yes. Yes, I did. I told her all. Even about herself. I thought God had given me the chance to help both of you. I thought God had shown me the way to reward you for your servitude.”

  The dragon snickered. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions . . . a truly fine human statement for this moment, would you not say?

  “Shut up!” After a moment, I realized what I’d done. “Not you, Kravayik.”

  There was no reply.

  “Kravayik!”

  He’d hung up. I couldn’t blame him, but it didn’t make me any less furious. I didn’t know how furious until I heard a sharp crack and found the candlestick phone draped over my hand, the top half broken off by my—our—strength.

  I threw the phone down. The dragon didn’t laugh again, but I could still sense his amusement. However, I could also sense an unease akin to mine.

  There was more to the story where Kravayik was concerned. He’d only peeled away a few layers for me. Claudette’d done something else that’d made her leave such a mark on him. He’d mentioned that she’d already seen more than most humans before he tried to change fate by telling her the truth about the two of us.

  What’re you holding back about, Kravayik? What?

  Ringing arose from the second phone I’d set near the table I used for my makeshift office. At this time of night, it could only be one of three people. The first’d just hung up on me. The second—Barnaby—I doubted would be calling me now.

  That left Claryce.

  I moved to the second telephone but, at the last moment, held back from answering. If I wasn’t fully aware of my hypocrisy after Kravayik, a brief chuckle from the dragon made certain that I was.

  Trying to ignore the ringing, I started thumbing through some of the old clippings left from the search. I picked up a yellowed one, then dropped it when the phone continued. Gritting my teeth, I turned to the device . . . and someone knocked on the front door.

  Even if Fetch’d come running from his usual haunts, he wouldn’t have bothered to knock. Howl, maybe, but not knock.

  I kept my hand ready by Her Lady’s gift as I approached. Behind me, the ringing continued unabated.

  The knock came again. As I approached, I heard a voice.

  “Nick! Open up!”

  Claryce’s voice. At least, it sounded like Claryce’s voice.

  “Damn you, Nick! I know you’re in there! Open up! You’ve got a lot to answer for, just leaving like that!”

  It was Claryce, all right. I swung the door open and met her glare. Arms folded around her to keep her warm, she stalked toward me. I wisely backed up as quickly as I could.

  And the telephone still kept ringing.

  “Nick—”

  I knew I was only going to make her angrier, but instead of trying to explain, I immediately ordered, “Shut the door, but stay by it.”

  I spun back to the phone. At this point, I supposed it could be Kravayik or Barnaby, but I doubted either.

  Midway through the next ring, I plucked up the receiver. Raising the telephone, I said, “Hello?”

  “Mr. Medea . . .”

  A woman’s voice. A woman’s voice with which I was familiar, though I couldn’t recall how.

  “Yes,” I finally answered. “This is Nick Medea.”

  “Mr. Medea . . . I don’t know how to go on with this . . . but we think we have something . . . something unnatural. We didn’t know what to do until my husband found your advertisement. I . . . I feel foolish even talking about this. . . .”

  I had an uneasy feeling about the conversation, even though it was identical to any number I’d had in the past. Folks never wanted to admit that they needed my “services.” Fortunately, they were always guaranteed to forget once I was finished.

  “Go on . . .” I encouraged, trying to ignore Claryce’s combined look of exasperation and curiosity.

  “Well, it takes place u
pstairs and in the attic. Nothing we can actually focus on, but things move and the shadows always seem wrong. We both feel like we’re being watched, and I swear I saw a tall, angular male figure.”

  A tall, angular figure. An elf. Not a surprise. Whenever clients spoke about figures, the figures tended to turn out to be some of the more humanoid creatures of Feirie.

  “Nick . . .” Claryce muttered.

  The woman on the other end didn’t hear the interruption. “My husband . . . he actually saw it first. Albert said—”

  “‘Albert’?” I instinctively looked at Claryce, who quieted immediately. She could read my expression well enough and knew that something was very, very wrong.

  She could hardly imagine. When the woman didn’t continue, I repeated her husband’s name. “You said ‘Albert.’ Your husband.”

  “Yes. I’m so sorry! I didn’t give you our name. I’m Kaarin. Kaarin Nilsson—”

  The line went dead. I immediately jiggled the earpiece cradle until the operator came on. “The call I was on. We were cut off.”

  The operator didn’t respond right away. After what was too long a time, she finally came back and said, “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t find any trace of a call to your number. In fact, I’m even having trouble identifying just what your number is. Do you have—”

  I hung up. It wasn’t surprising that the operator couldn’t find a direct link to my number for the same reason only that those who actually needed my service saw the ad. I’d hoped she wouldn’t bother checking my end of the conversation, but at least she’d done so only after trying to find out what’d happened to my “caller.”

  “What was that call, Nick? You look disturbed.”

  “A . . . ghost . . . from the past. Literally. A client recently murdered. Kaarin Nilsson.” I told her all about the Nilssons.

  She looked like I felt. I’d failed the Nilssons badly, and their deaths would stick with me for a long, long time.

  “Then, it’s a trick, then,” Claryce decided. “By who?”

  “Dr. Alexander Bond, I assume, who’s pretty much a ghost himself.” I then told her about what I’d been told and what’d happened at Saint Boniface.

  “Michael again. Is he really who you think he is?”

  “He sure as hell knows a lot about what’s going on—”

  “Nick! You shouldn’t talk like that about him!”

  I shrugged. “I don’t see what worse can be done to me.”

  “I can think of too many things.” She slipped off her coat. “Don’t ever leave me behind again. Not in the day, not in the night. If Kravayik hadn’t called me—”

  “He did what?” I thought for a moment that he’d called her apartment looking for me, but the Kravayik who now served the church would never have let on that a single woman he knew might have a man in her home overnight regardless of how innocent it’d turned out.

  “He called me. I don’t know how he found out my number. Only the people at Delke have it . . . unless he got it through you?”

  “Not me. What did he want?”

  She wandered to the table and started vaguely rummaging through the old clippings. “I’m not quite certain. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that he was trying to apologize for something he’d done to me.”

  “No idea what?”

  “None.” She picked up a clipping, glanced at it, then dropped it. “What do you think the phone call just now means? Are you sure it’s Bond?”

  “No. Since the Frost Moon, things’ve changed. There are powers stirring I never even knew existed. There are ghosts where there were none. Maybe this was Kaarin Nilsson, trying to keep me after who murdered her and her husband, Albert.”

  “Ghosts . . .” Claryce, another clipping in her hand, eyed me. “Like the one in Saint Michael’s?”

  I’d never gotten around to mentioning Diocles. He was part of my past I didn’t want to share with her. Not because of what he’d done, but more because of what I refused to do. Forgive him and let him move on. “You know about it?”

  “Father Jonathan let it slip, but I thought I saw something once or twice, including the first time you brought me there. Is there really a ghost in the church?”

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t bother concerning yourself with it.”

  Claryce frowned. “Why do I have the feeling you’re hiding something . . . again?”

  Instead of answering, I started organizing the clippings. As I did, I saw the paper where I’d written down the information about the Nilssons and their situation. Wondering if that meant anything, I read through the short set of notes.

  Nothing. I tossed the notes aside.

  “What was that?”

  “The sum of my worth to the Nilssons. The information I never got around to following up on because I thought theirs was a minor matter.”

  “You couldn’t have known it was that bad.” Claryce picked up the paper. “How often do you get these calls?”

  “Used to be once or twice a month. The last year, almost once a week average. More in the past three months.”

  “It’s getting worse?”

  “Much.”

  She pursed her lips. “So sad about them. We have to stop him, Nick.”

  I didn’t like her use of “we.” I already hated the fact that I had no choice in Claryce being in my life. Each incident meant a chance that something fatal could happen to her.

  I would not let that happen.

  She set the paper down. My guilt about the Nilssons growing by the moment, I slid it to the side and out of my immediate sight.

  And there saw a file I’d not gotten to.

  Claryce could clearly sense my interest in it as I pulled it from the pile. “Something?”

  “I don’t know.” I started looking over the contents, all dated roughly three years after the exposition. The only thing that tied the file itself to our search was that it contained crimes related to Chicago no matter where they’d actually taken place.

  I went through two murders and a fraud case. Two more murders after that. Then, something about the fraud case made me go back to that clipping and read more carefully.

  There it was. The link.

  H. Webster Mudgett.

  Mudgett. The same name as Joseph’s mysterious visitor. A visitor who might also be Dr. Alexander Bond.

  “What do you have?”

  “I’ve found our Dr. Mudgett . . . or rather, the name. A fraud case.”

  She saw the file. “In 1896?”

  I didn’t answer. I still wasn’t satisfied. I’d had a strong suspicion about Bond all this time, and his use of Mudgett’s name had only strengthened that suspicion. Keeping the clipping aside, I looked for any other piece concerning the fraud case.

  What I found was murder.

  I dropped the rest of the file on the table, eyeing the proof of what I’d known all along.

  “Nick?”

  “‘H. Webster Mudgett, convicted of murder, was executed by hanging today in Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia for the death of Benjamin Pitezel. It is believed as H. H. Holmes, Mudgett, also called the Beast of Chicago, may be responsible for more than thirty murders, many of them in his infamous Murder Castle in Chicago.’”

  She shivered. “H. H. Holmes . . . so he is dead. Thank goodness for that at least.”

  She still didn’t understand. For all her adaptability, Claryce was still thinking in normal mortal terms. Even me discovering this clipping hadn’t been a simple matter of research. Now I saw the phone call from the late Kaarin Nilsson in a new, unsettling light. The call’d made me look at the notes, which then Claryce had done, which had led to the paper settling on top of just the right file. Justice—and vengeance—were strong factors in the supernatural world. The Nilssons were perhaps demanding justice.

  Justice against a monstrosity stretching its hand again over Chicago. I handed Claryce the article. “There’s a photo. Take a look.”

  She did. She saw. From the flashing of her eyes, she mor
e than understood the depths of the evil rising in the Frost Moon’s wake.

  As I’d suspected early on, but had wanted to deny, H. Webster Mudgett, H. H. Holmes—the Beast of Chicago—and Dr. Alexander Bond were all one and the same.

  CHAPTER 17

  On May 7, 1896, H. H. Holmes had been hung until dead, his lifelessness verified. His body’d been disposed of far from Chicago. That should’ve been the end of it.

  But the face staring at us from the old clipping was Alexander Bond. Alexander Bond, who’d somehow come to be buried in Saint Boniface shortly after. Alexander Bond, who’d not stayed buried long.

  Alexander Bond. H. Webster Mudgett. H. H. Holmes.

  “Did he trick them, do you think?” Claryce asked, her tone indicating she already knew my answer.

  “No. I’m pretty certain that if we’d been there we’d have seen a very dead H. H. Holmes.” I didn’t care about either his birth name or his other identities anymore, not even that of Alexander Bond. It’d been as Holmes that he’d become known as the demon in human form, and I was more than happy to call him by that name, just so long as I was able to put him back in the grave once and for all.

  “But he’s human . . . or was . . . wasn’t he?”

  “So was I once.” Before she could protest the comparison, I waved her off. “I know. Different. Think of this. You met Joseph. One of the intentions of the plot he and his comrades sought to put into motion was such power that they’d also be able to extend their lives indefinitely. It’s been done before, but at horrible cost. The Clothos Deck can offer that, too . . . with a heavy price, of course. Even one card, if you make the right choice.”

  She was oddly silent. “You’ve faced people like this before? Were they all like him . . . I mean bad, evil, whatever you want to call it?”

  “No. There were those who came close to being real saints. I suppose some of them might still be alive, assuming they didn’t get reckless somewhere along the way. Becoming immortal tends to draw other, more unpredictable elements to you.”