Black City Saint

by Richard A. Knaak

  There were few modern pastimes I paid any attention to, my ageless task demanding my focus day and night, but moving pictures, with their vivid if silent images, and the sport of baseball had both caught my attention. Fetch had dared once suggest that these two things—along with my own slipping into the occasional colloquialisms or slang—were the first cracks in my armor, that I was finally becoming part of humanity again, but after the stare he’d received for that remark, he had never brought up such foolishness again.

  That didn’t mean that I hadn’t found some truth in his words, despite the danger of letting down my guard in any way.

  “Your Sox haven’t fared much better,” I answered casually, comfortable with this part of the conversation at least. “Last year, Eddie Collins couldn’t keep the slide to last from slowing any better than Evers and Walsh before him. Fifth this year isn’t that much better. No, I simply decided to take the day off and see a different part of the city.”

  He let out a brief hmmph, the closest to a laugh he usually got where his work was concerned. “Wait’ll next year for both of us, right? Never mind! Lucky chance, us finding each other today. Thought I was going to wear out my dogs looking for you!”

  I tried to keep my demeanor calm. Despite the way I often acted, I liked Cortez. I just didn’t want him poking around near me, for his sake as much as mine. “The police need a paranormal debunker?”

  “No, I just had a question of my own about the break-in at the Art Institute.”

  I’d heard something about a break-in but had not had time to read up on it. Still, for some reason, the news made me stiffen. “What would I know?”

  He held up his hands in mock defense. “Easy, Bo! You’re not in dutch!” Cortez ignored my raised brow at his use of such slang. With others, he knew to at least to try to fit in and the slang was an easy way, but his previous encounters with me should have been enough to remind him that I couldn’t have cared less what color or race he was. Worse, I didn’t want to start thinking of him and Fetch in the same light. “I’m not asking if you were the culprit! They stole some interesting items but not the priciest ones, you know? Bits of ancient armor that hadn’t been on display for years. Real old stuff, they say . . . third-century Roman or something. Donated by some European Jiggs who moved over here right before the turn of the century.”

  I knew nothing about some millionaire’s museum donation nor its theft, but the date of the antiquities bothered me much. I revealed none of that to Cortez. “I’ve a fondness for antiques, but this is the first I’ve heard of all this.”

  “Don’t you listen to the radio or read the Trib or the Daily News?” he asked, referring to two of the more prominent of the city’s many papers.

  My concentration had been on other matters, but I did vaguely wonder how that had escaped my notice. I continued to play ignorant, something only half an act at this point. “I’ve been busy.”

  He took my answer for what it was worth. “Understand that. Me, I’m always busy, too. Maria and the little ones keep me up when I do get home, but, hey, makes my life a good one.” As he spoke, Cortez reached into his jacket again. “Actually, for you, I got one other question. Nothing concerning the break-in . . . I think. About a so-called ‘cursed’ statuette.” The item he pulled out proved to be a photograph. “You know about curses and things. The piece in this was stolen the same night as the articles from the Institute. Reported by the woman in the picture, though she’s not the owner. I don’t know, the timing of the thefts could be coincidence . . .”

  I still distrusted his supposed reason for wanting to speak with me, but I had no choice. I took the photograph.

  Before I had a chance to even glance at it, Cortez added, “A very lovely, elegant lady.” Cortez always took care to speak well of white women. One wrong word heard by his fellow cops could not only have him broken in rank but also broken in pieces. “Her name’s Claryce Simone. You know her?”

  Even despite so much practice keeping my expression from revealing my thoughts, it took great effort to hold back my surprise.

  “Don’t know her,” I replied. “Let me take a look at the statuette—”

  But I’d barely glanced at the picture when all sense abandoned me. I let the photo drop as if it were on fire. Only once since the Night the Dragon Breathed had I felt so stunned, so unable to even think straight.

  Cortez grabbed hold of me. Not aware of the true reason I had reacted so, his voice was filled with real concern. “Hey! You all right? Having a heart attack? Say something, Bo!”

  “No—I’m—it’s all right . . .”

  “Yeah.” He sounded skeptical and with good reason. I had no doubt that I was as pale as one of Her Lady’s courtiers, possibly more.

  Gingerly releasing me, the inspector scooped up the photo, granting me one more glimpse of its subject. The statuette, a foot-high dryad draped sensually around her tree, was of some general interest to me for its possible origins, but it was not the cause of my overwhelming shock. That had to do with a woman in an elegant silk blouse and stylish long dark skirt and jacket posing next to the statuette, which sat upon a small stand. Her cloche hat fit snuggly around her brow but otherwise did not obscure her features.

  The woman called Claryce Simone.

  She was young, fair of hair, and with a hint of perhaps the Mediterranean in her background. There was no denying that she was beautiful, with full lips and wide, expressive eyes I knew, despite only having the black-and-white photo before me, would be the color of dark chocolate.

  Unfortunately, there was also no denying that she was a woman I had seen die horribly twice, the last time nearly a hundred years ago.

  CHAPTER 3

  My jolt proved to be the excuse needed to end my undesired encounter with Cortez. After reassuring himself that I would not need medical help, he returned to the car with the promise that we would speak again at a better time. I nodded noncommittally, unable to focus on anything else but the realization that I was again about to repeat a terrible cycle.

  Refusing to simply give in to that destiny, I abandoned my intended study of the building. All but fleeing, I returned home. Only there, in the house, in the dark, was I able to begin to think again.

  And what I thought of was a woman cursed to come into my life over and over with the hope of saving me, only herself to perish.

  I thought of Cleolinda.

  At that point, he laughed at my fear.

  Eye was wondering when she would come again . . .

  I kicked out at the wooden table in front of me, caring not a whit that any antique dealer would have shrieked at my careless use of the six-hundred-year-old piece. It tumbled onto its side, spilling notes I had made prior to my visit to Mrs. Hauptmann. The act was a foolish, futile one but all I could do when unable to strike a creature who existed only within me.

  “She’ll be left out of it this time!” I snapped at the air and him.

  You and Eye know better . . . we three are bound . . . you and Eye by the blood shed between us . . . she by love and virtue . . .

  He said the last with mockery, love and virtue alien to his reptilian nature. He blamed her for what had befallen him, as much as he blamed me, the one who had impaled him.

  “Love has nothing to do with this,” I finally managed to argue. In the beginning, I had only tried to keep her from harm and had never intended to pressed any suit. However, fate had played its own devious game, stirring love between us, only to have death apparently separate us forever.

  He only laughed again at my poor denial, the harsh sound echoing through my head until it ached. Eye know the truth . . . Eye know you best, oh pious saint!

  “Be quiet!”

  He said nothing more, but I could still sense his amusement. There was very little he had. No corporeal form. No chance to wield his monumental power for nearly a hundred years. Death had even forbidden him release, instead forever trapping his essence in the weaker, mortal body of his slayer.

  It
was surely enough to drive even a dragon mad.

  It meant nothing to him that I suffered, also. He had pointed out often in the past that I had control of the body. I decided our current fate. He did not wish to die again, but rather regain his grand and glorious might, even if it meant guarding the Gate by himself. I, on the other hand, simply wanted to make amends for my ignorance and foolhardiness, though if it meant standing watch until Judgment Day.

  I thought again of Silene, of that place where I had not only faced a dragon and became a legend, a saint, but also where I had met Cleolinda.

  Saint George is no saint . . . came the dragon’s voice suddenly. Before I could argue with him, he receded into the background again.

  Leaving the table where it was, I rose to stare at a small painting hanging over the unused marble fireplace. I had hung it there to always remind me of how it had all began, not that I really needed my memory stirred. My constant companion had once declared that I enjoyed my misery so much that there had been no choice but to set such a blatant reminder where it would always be seen. I could not argue with him.

  Seeking anything that might keep me from concentrating too much on the revelation concerning Claryce Simone, I went to the room I used as a study and turned to the heavy, wooden file cabinets where I daily stored any and all articles cut from the half dozen or more newspapers available to me. Someday, I hoped that there would be a device—like the great computation machines that were currently being devised, only much smaller, more compact—that could make my tasks a little simpler. Until that happened, though, I’d continue adding to the files on a daily basis.

  A radio more expensive and elaborate than Mrs. Hauptman’s took up most of a small table to the side. I considered dialing up the news on WMAQ but held off. Silence was what I needed for my current research. Retrieving a file from one of the cabinets, I went through the most recent articles concerning the Art Institute. Although I had not paid them much mind when I’d cut them from the Tribune, the fact that they concerned that place had guaranteed they were saved in the first place. The Institute had a wealth of art . . . and more than one item with origins linked to Feirie. Most were inconsequential, but a few I kept an eye on, which made it all the more disturbing that I had not paid attention to the theft.

  The three articles I discovered essentially contained the same information, save that one made mention of the fact that the pieces had been stored for so long that only those who kept the inventory even knew that they existed. There was no description of the actual items save what I knew from Cortez and the first article—some armor of ancient make and two weapons. They apparently represented an intriguing art style—which is why they had been donated in the first place—but I was more concerned with their functionality. Did they possess some power that made them of value to one of the Wyld living in the mortal world or perhaps one of those humans who were versed in the magical arts?

  Feirie and this realm had existed side by side since the dawn of time. However, Feirie, the nexus of what was simplistically called “magic,” had developed much earlier. The Court in all its mad majesty had spread throughout Feirie even before mankind discovered fire.

  But it was when mankind began to grow into its own that the two worlds became more and more intertwined. There were those that said that the imagination of the mortal race fueled the power of Feirie and that the magic of Feirie in turn stirred the souls of men toward the arts and creativity. I was never certain if any of that was true. I only knew that it had been discovered that there needed to be a balance between both, that the two realms could never truly meld into one or even allow one to overwhelm the other. Both worlds had seen the folly of that when Her Lady’s Lord had decreed, for the good of Feirie, that the mortal plane should be vassal to the Court.

  He had almost succeeded in his desire more than once. For humans, that had each time meant a return to barbarism and unthinking fear of the dark. For Feirie, it had provided first a monumental, uncontrollable rise in wild magic, beyond the Court’s command, and then a fading of that magic until even the Court itself had grown mortal. Oberon himself had failed to recognize what disaster his deeds caused his own subjects, so certain had he been of the righteousness of his cause.

  The panic ensuing after one of the later incidents had been such that the Court had eventually turned in protest against His Lord himself. But Oberon had remained deaf to their entreaties . . . and so it had finally taken Her Lady’s coup to cast out her king, realign the Court, and see that Feirie survived.

  That the mortal world was also salvaged in the process was coincidental.

  However, there were those among the Wyld who still pursued Oberon’s foul legacy. They did so, fortunately, without a master. Exiled to this realm, Oberon had followed the Gate, which had—thanks to my tremendous foolhardiness and ignorance—moved across the world for centuries of its own accord and without warning, possibly following some intention no one understood. When it had come to rest near the rising city of Chicago, he had been there to seek to claim its power and make the mortal world and Feirie one again, regardless of the consequences.

  But we had been there also, of course. The dragon and I. The guardians. The sentries. The cursed. We stopped Oberon. At my decision, for the first time since he and I had become one, the dragon breathed.

  And while the Gate remained sealed, while Oberon perished in the pure flames that only a dragon can breathe . . . the city, too, burned.

  But with His Lord, and with Chicago, had perished a woman whose face and form had been the same as that of Claryce Simone . . . and the Princess Cleolinda of Silene.

  I saw all three women in my mind. I saw them as if the two previous savored life as Claryce Simone surely did. Behind them began to form the shadows of other figures, other tragic incarnations—lost lives reaching all the way back to that fatal event in the third century.

  Though I could not yet see their faces, I knew that every one would be identical.

  It was all I could do at that point to keep from shoving over the file cabinet in anger. Instead, I satisfied myself with merely crushing my fist against the wall. The wall gave way, but I could feel some of the bones in my hand crack.

  In my head, he laughed.

  Eye will take care of that . . .

  No sooner did he make the promise than I felt the bones knit. In the process, the pieces scraped against one another, causing me to wince.

  There was no benevolence in his act. I belatedly realized that he had been the one stirring the memories, that he had been the one resurrecting those tormenting moments.

  It was the only avenue of vengeance left for a titan now bereft of even the slightest physical act. It was a savage game we played over the centuries, hating each other yet bound as none could imagine. Saint George and the dragon, forever one, forever guarding the Gate. It was a duty I, who had set in motion the initial chaos, had willingly accepted . . . but ever prayed to Heaven that I would be able to perform alone someday.

  Eye will always be with you . . . and you will always be with me . . .

  He did not torture me now, only stated a bald fact we could not escape. That he referred to himself as “Eye” was because he had known no name when alive, had not even understood the concept. There had been other dragons of legend with names, but he had never had one. Now, he called himself by the only part of him that had some existence, the only part I regularly summoned from darkness. I needed his unique vision, his ability to tear away many of the veils hiding those of the Feirie who crossed into the mortal world. Now and then, I had been forced to summon other aspects of him, but only in desperate straits.

  I reached for the clippings again—and the second phone that I kept in the makeshift study rang. The dragon shared my distrust at this unexpected moment. I had expected no call and only one other knowingly had the number. He wasn’t supposed to call yet, but . . .

  I quickly answered. “Kravayik?”

  But the voice on the other end was the last I e
xpected to hear. “I’m sorry. Do I have the right number? I’m looking for Nick Medea. This is Claryce Simone.”

  “Claryce?” I blurted out her name before I could stop myself.

  “Is this Nick?”

  “Yes . . . I’m sorry. I thought it was another call,” I quickly responded. A new feeling of dread draping over me, I asked, “You’re still in Milwaukee?”

  “No. Matters ended early and I came straight back. I’m just gathering a couple of things I need from the office. I was hoping that we could meet earlier, perhaps even in an hour, hour and a half?”

  Her voice all but pled with me to agree. The hair on my neck stiffened. Something had changed since our last conversation. “Do you have a particular reason?”

  “I-I’d rather not say. You’ll think me crazy. Can we meet earlier?”

  My constant companion gave every indication of wanting me to refuse. It was one thing to torment me with visions of the past, but another for both of us actually to reenter a cycle of damnation.

  I wanted to side with him—a rarity—but I knew better. “I’ll leave now. I should be there shortly.”

  The gratitude in her voice only filled me with more regret. “Thank you, Nick.”

  I bid her farewell, then, after hanging up, picked up the receiver and dialed another number. The phone rang several times before a low, tentative voice with a heavy, unidentifiable accent said, “Yes? Who is speaking?”

  “Nick,” I answered.

  “Kravayik awaits your command, Nicholas.”

  I grimaced. Compared to Kravayik, Fetch treated me with utter disdain. “I don’t command you, Kravayik. You do me a favor. I’m grateful. All’s well?”

  “It remains,” he replied. “Peace is with us.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, even though I had been certain that he would answer so. “Thank you, Kravayik.”

  “No . . . thank you for showing me the way.”