Blood & Rust

by S. A. Swiniarski

  There was a long pause. Stefan could feel that Iago was leaving it to be filled with questions. It was Nuri who asked, talking for the first time since Iago entered his monologue.

  “You said we didn’t know what is going on. What is going on?”

  “Melchior wishes to reclaim his temporal kingdom. He believes that our race should rule, and that he should rule our race. He has begun with subtlety, binding humans to him, sometimes with money, sometimes with blood. He already has a secret hand in all the affairs of this city, and his influence extends across this continent.”

  Stefan shook his head. “Why are you talking to us? You have this Covenant, there should be others of your kind to help you—”

  “You don’t understand,” Iago said. “The bodies you’ve been finding, headless, dismembered, they are the leaders of our race. Melchior has been systematically exterminating those of any power and influence that could be in his way. Those not yet executed are paralyzed by fear. We know, you see. He leaves the bodies to inspire terror, while our own Covenant prevents any from revealing what is going on.”

  “Except you,” Nuri said.

  “It is my survival,” Iago said. “Carried to its limits, Melchior’s plan will be the extermination of every one of us who is not of his own blood.” He looked at Stefan, and again he felt the sensation of Iago seeing too much of him. “You I chose because I need untainted humans to aid me. Melchior would sense one of the blood if any approached. He would know me, because his thralls have tasted my blood. Humans would be a cipher to him. No human organization—not the police, not the crime mobs, not the FBI—can close on him, because he has ears in every corner of those groups. But individually you can act without his knowledge. He is not omniscient.”

  “Beyond your threats,” Nuri said, “why should we help you?”

  Iago looked at Nuri. His expression was grave. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Melchior plans the extermination of everyone who is not of his own blood. Humans who enslave themselves to him will have the privilege of being the cattle for his empire. Those who don’t ...”

  Iago didn’t finish the statement, but Stefan could feel the implications in his gut. For all he believed this thing across from him to be evil, there wasn’t any way he could walk away from this now.

  10

  Sunday, November 22

  Detective Simon Aristaeus stood in an unobtrusive corner of the Union Terminal Building, leaning against a bank of phone booths. He held a copy of the Cleveland Press in his hands, but his eyes weren’t focused on the paper. With his head lowered, and the brim of his hat shading his eyes, he watched the crowds coming and going through to the train station. He was watching for one man in particular.

  He wondered what Van Sweringen would make of the police surveillance of him in his own building. Detective Aristaeus didn’t quite know what to make of it himself. He was reporting to Ness, not his supervisor, or even the Chief. That, with the vagueness of his orders, and the cover of secrecy, gave this the feeling of a fishing expedition. He knew he wasn’t the first cop to be given this duty, and the way things were going, he wouldn’t be the last.

  He listened to footsteps echo off marble and wondered if he was ever going to see Van Sweringen. He was supposed to be making a business trip to New York, but there were a lot of ways down to the tracks, and one of the other cops down here could have already seen him and called it in. He wondered if anyone would have the courtesy to tell him if Van Sweringen had already left in his private passenger car, or if they’d just leave him here, forgotten, waiting.

  It was late evening when he finally saw his quarry. Van Sweringen walked through the station with near anonymity. As he watched, Detective Aristaeus doubted any of the crowd realized that the man walking in their midst was the titular head of one of the largest railroad empires in the country, and the man responsible for the construction of the building they walked through.

  Detective Aristaeus didn’t move his head, but his gaze followed Van Sweringen, picking out the people accompanying him. He noted Wenneman, Van Sweringen’s secretary. He also noted two others following the pair—

  Detective Aristaeus was taken by surprise when he recognized one of the two men following Van Sweringen. He knew Detective Ryzard; he was part of the homicide unit. What was he doing here?

  He didn’t spend much time worrying about it. Once Van Sweringen passed him on the way to the trains, he casually folded his newspaper and slid into one of the phone booths. He called into the station and made a perfunctory report to one of Ness’ secretaries. Ness himself probably wasn’t even working on a Sunday.

  Detective Aristaeus hung up the phone, hesitated a moment, then made another call. He made a report similar to the one he had just given, but this time he added the detail of Detective Ryzard’s presence. After he had spoken, he listened for several minutes. Then he nodded and said, “I shall do as you will me to.”

  Detective Aristaeus hung up the phone, left the paper, and walked into the terminal, following Ryzard and Van Sweringen.

  Stefan and Nuri boarded the train about three cars up from the private car carrying Oris Paxton Van Sweringen. Stefan was still wondering how they were going to confront Van Sweringen. The last time they hadn’t gotten very far, and now they had to press it. Stefan needed to know which trains were running under Dietrich‘s—Metchior’s—control.

  They sat in the car, waiting for the train to begin moving. Next to him, Nuri muttered, “I don’t believe we’re going through with this.” He was looking out at the platform.

  “You’ve seen what Melchior is doing.”

  Nuri shook his head. “I’ve seen odd things, but nothing that convinces me Iago is telling us the truth.”

  Stefan frowned. That was one of his own fears. How could he trust a monster from the same race as the being they were charged to destroy? Evil was evil, and by merely listening to Iago, he felt that they were being ensnared in the darkness.

  “We’re just gathering information right now. We’ll do nothing until we’re sure of where we stand.”

  The words sounded empty even to Stefan. By boarding the train they had stepped outside their roles as policemen. Ness had warned them off of Van Sweringen, and being here would be grounds for a suspension or a transfer. If, as Stefan suspected, there was any strongarming to get what they needed to know, they could be very easily dismissed from the force.

  What they were doing was very close to the edge, and their motives were completely beyond the pale. They were gathering information to help them target Melchior. They were engaged in conspiracy to murder.

  “Just planning,” Nuri whispered.

  The underground platform of the Union Terminal slid by them and the train pulled itself along the tracks. Soon the motion fell into a rhythm as they slid out the east side of downtown. Behind them, the lights of the Terminal Tower cut a hole in the night the shape of a thin gravestone.

  “Just planning,” Stefan said. That’s all they were doing. Planning the death of a man named Eric Dietrich, who was supposedly a thing named Melchior.

  On one level, they were just marking time until they found a way to deal with Iago and his threats. On another, they were really going through with it.

  Stefan had decided early that the worst place to attack Melchior would be his residence. He had seen an attempted hit by a score of assassins. He was too well defended there. No, the best place, in Stefan’s mind, to attack Melchior would be in transit. Stefan knew that Melchior controlled trains somewhere, even if there was no official records of the fact. Stefan was almost certain that there was some private agreement with Van Sweringen, and that parts of their rail line were under Melchior’s control.

  If they discovered the lines that Melchior used, they’d have a better chance of isolating his movement. If Iago was right, he wouldn’t be aware of surveillance originating outside of the police department. With only the two of them, there would be no spies to warn him.

  Once they knew the cars
Melchior used, it would just be a matter of planting some explosives.

  Stefan shuddered at the thought. He still wasn’t used to the idea, even if he’d been partly aware of the implications ever since he’d known what Dietrich-Melchior was. He had known that the presence of a vampire required it to be slain.

  He just wished there was another way. Iago maintained there wasn’t. Melchior was so powerful that only complete and instant destruction of the body would kill him.

  “When do we go?” Nuri asked.

  “After everyone’s asleep. You might as well catch a nap yourself.”

  Nuri nodded, but didn’t close his eyes. Instead he stared out the window at the darkened world.

  Detective Aristaeus sat in first class, the only conscious person in the private cabin. Across from him, three people were crumpled in a heap on the seat. He paid no attention to them; once they had fallen unconscious they no longer mattered to his plans.

  The shades were drawn on all the windows, and he sat illuminated only by a single weak electric lamp. The light made the world slightly jaundiced.

  His revolver lay on the seat next to him. In his hands he held two bottles of liquid so red and thick that it was almost black. His hand shook as he set down one, opened the other, and drank.

  They were into Pennsylvania before Stefan decided to move. It was nearly three-thirty in the morning, and the train had gone silent except for the rattle of its passage across the tracks. Most of their fellow passengers were asleep.

  Stefan grabbed Nuri’s arm and they made their way back through the car. Neither of them spoke. They passed through three cars before they reached the end of the passenger cars. They stood on the platform before Van Sweringen’s private car.

  The entrance was locked, but the lock was a simple one to jimmy, even with the motion of the train and the wind whistling between the cars. Nuri muttered something about feeling like a hit man. Stefan didn’t comment. In a way that was exactly what they were.

  They slipped into the car, which resembled one of the first class passenger cars, only with two cabins and richer decoration that Stefan could barely see in the darkness. All he could really notice was the brocade of the carpet.

  The two of them slid along the darkened aisle to the rear, where Van Sweringen’s room was. Again the door was locked and Stefan found himself forcing it. Behind him, Nuri had taken out his revolver and was watching back the way they had come.

  In a few minutes he popped the door open.

  The two of them slipped into the darkened chamber. The half of the cabin they entered had chairs and a table, and a window watching the darkened Pennsylvania wilderness pass by under an overcast sky. Half of the cabin was shut out by a heavy curtain that rippled gray and black in the darkness.

  The curtain was moving.

  Stefan and Nuri exchanged glances and looked again at the curtain. Stefan felt a wrongness here, almost as if he was in the presence of Iago, or another minion of darkness. With one hand he pulled out a rosary, and with the other he withdrew his revolver.

  He motioned Nuri to one side of the curtain, and he stationed himself on the other. Once they were set on both sides, Stefan motioned for Nuri to pull back the curtain.

  The curtain drew aside, revealing Oris Paxton Van Sweringen lying on his bed, and another man leaning over him. When the curtain drew aside, the man dropped something from his hand, something he’d been holding to Van Sweringen’s mouth.

  He turned, holding a revolver, but Stefan saw the man’s face, and recognition made him hesitate. The man was Simon Aristaeus, a fellow detective in the Cleveland Police Department. The shock of seeing him gave Aristaeus enough time to turn fully around. Nuri had his gun leveled at Aristaeus and was shouting, “Drop it!”

  For a moment the tableau held, the three of them unmoving, guns pointed at each other. The silence was filled with the rhythmic clatter of the rails. From the slowing of the car, and the shadows outside, they were entering a rail yard. It lasted until Van Sweringen stirred, groaned, and sat up. Stefan had just enough time to see that his mouth was dark with blood before hell broke loose.

  Aristaeus used the distraction to move, and there were two gunshots in rapid succession, neither from Stefan’s gun. Aristaeus kept moving to the side of the car, while Nuri folded over and fell against the wall. Van Sweringen yelled something incomprehensible as Stefan turned to cover Aristaeus.

  This time he didn’t hesitate firing. He couldn’t tell if he’d hit him or not. Whatever happened, Aristaeus fell upon the emergency brake cord and everything shuddered against the sudden lack of motion. Stefan fell over and Van Sweringen tumbled out of his bed.

  Aristaeus remained upright and scrambled out the front door in all the confusion.

  Almost immediately, there was another jerk as something outside collided with the car. Then there was silence.

  “What the blazes is going on here?” Van Sweringen said as he pushed himself off of the floor. Stefan ignored him and went to Nuri. Nuri was clutching his right shoulder; he looked up at Stefan and groaned a bit.

  “We need to get you to a hospital—”

  “No,” Nuri said through gritted teeth, “This will keep. Get after that bastard.”

  Stefan hesitated a moment, then nodded and ran out the door. The door between cars was already swinging shut behind Aristaeus. In the distance, came the sounds of people roused by the sudden stop. Stefan ducked through the door, and had to duck back as a gunshot whistled past him.

  Aristaeus was outside, and Stefan’s few quick glances saw him running away across the tracks. When he was sure Aristaeus wasn’t taking aim at the cars, Stefan dove out after him. He stumbled. The area between the cars was broken and uneven. Van Sweringen’s car had been pushed up in a collision with its neighbor, buckling the space between cars.

  Stefan fell out to the side, and pushed himself up as a bullet kicked up a divot of gravel near his hands. This time he had a chance to steady himself and return fire.

  Aristaeus was about fifty yards off, and showed no sign of being hit. Stefan fired again, and Aristaeus dove behind a stationary boxcar. Stefan began running across the gravel, chasing him. He ran, following the tracks through the sparsely lit railyard.

  Aristaeus was ducking behind lone boxcars parked on a siding at one edge of the yard. Stefan just reached the first in the series of cars when another shot splintered the wood about a foot from his shoulder.

  He could hear Aristaeus moving out there, and Stefan suspected that if he moved from the cover of the boxcar the next shot would find its mark.

  He holstered his gun and swung himself up on the rusty iron rungs set in the side of the car. He pulled himself up toward the roof of the boxcar. Once on top, it gave him a view of the other boxcars on this side of the railyard.

  He knew that Aristaeus was behind one of the cars, so he waited for him to make a move. Aristaeus did—he ducked around a car about twenty yards away, at the edge of the tracks, and put another shot into the side of the boxcar Stefan was on top of. Then he began running into the long grass lining the rails.

  Stefan yelled at him, “Stop, drop the gun!”

  Aristaeus responded by beginning to turn back toward him. Stefan didn’t wait, he fired two shots. Aristaeus buckled, the gun going off wildly. He dropped and disappeared into the grass.

  Stefan stood there, on top of the boxcar, watching for more threatening movement. There wasn’t any. It was as if Aristaeus had fallen through a hole in the earth. Stefan couldn’t see where he had fallen, the dark grass had swallowed him up.

  Behind him came the sounds of machinery, trains, and the babble of people. Stefan could also hear the voices and footsteps of three or four people—probably rail police—running toward him.

  Around him and the boxcars, everything was suddenly silent. The only movement in his field of vision was the twisting fog from his breath, and the distant motes of camp-fires just outside the boundaries of the yard.

  Stefan holstered his weap
on and let himself down. He headed toward the edge of the tracks, where Aristaeus had run off into the grass. He had just reached the edge, spotting the barely visible signs where Aristaeus had torn up the grass in his scramble to escape, when behind him came a voice, “Hold it right there!” Stefan’s shadow sprang up in front of him transfixed in the center of a flashlight beam.

  He turned around, squinting in the light, to face three railroad policemen. “I’m the police,” he called out to them, reaching slowly for his badge. “Detective Ryzard.” He held out the badge so it glinted in the flashlight beam. He neglected to name the city, because, wherever in Pennsylvania they were, they were far out of his jurisdiction.

  “The man out there just shot my partner,” he added.

  One of the railroad bulls edged up to see Stefan’s badge, then he waved at the one with the flashlight. The beam left Stefan and began sweeping over the grass.

  “Sorry, Detective,” said the one next to him. “We have this accident on the Nickel Plate Line, and then all the gunshots ...”

  Stefan nodded. He wondered if the man knew how deferential he was sounding now. Stefan supposed when your job was predominantly rousting hobos off the tracks, you might get over-respectful for a “real” policeman.

  Stefan ended up leading the three railroad cops into the grass, following Aristaeus’ broken trail. At this point Stefan was glad for the backup, even though it seemed that Aristaeus had dropped like a rock. With what he was involved in, Stefan wasn’t going to take anything at face value.

  They made their way deeper into the grass, closing on where Aristaeus had dropped. Stefan noticed that they had gained a quiet audience off in the distance. The hobos and tramps had abandoned their fires for the moment and had closed in to watch the commotion. They were far away, too far to make out individuals, and apparently too far for the railroad cops to care, but they gave the whole scene the feeling of a performance, as if Stefan was an actor in some medieval morality play.