Blood & Rust

by S. A. Swiniarski

  “Accompany me,” Melchior said, and Stefan did so, following Melchior and Aristaeus through the train. He didn’t spare a look right or left, or even for the body of the woman that still lay across their path.

  They passed through the length of two more empty cars. Past the one on which Stefan had planted his explosives, into a car that hadn’t been on the train when Stefan had boarded. It appeared as a normal boxcar, misplaced at the end of a passenger train. And the trio of them had to step off of the unmoving train and walk to the side of the boxcar.

  The door slid open on a dark empty space. A few candles flickered in one end of the car. Melchior led them up into the car, Stefan following, silent, staring and unaware.

  Chained at the rear of the car was Iago.

  Melchior looked upon him and said, “I wanted you to see your ally before you die. I wanted you to see how deeply you failed.”

  Iago looked up with a pale, wasted face. “You’ll fail, Melchior. And destroy all of us with you.”

  Melchior laughed.

  “The Covenant was to protect us. If humanity believes in what you are, they’ll do anything to destroy you and all like you.”

  “The voice of fear and weakness.” Melchior walked up to Iago. As he did so, he gestured to Aristaeus to close the door. “Our noble race is meant to rule this mongrel cattle. Fear of them is a perversion that has poisoned our race since the inception of your Covenant.”

  Iago spat, carefully avoiding Melchior’s gaze. “And you are meant to rule our noble race?”

  “Who else of us remains unfettered by your perverted Covenant?”

  “You are the perversion,” Iago said.

  Melchior took a hand and ran it along the side of Iago’s face. “Take a look at what it is you fear.” Melchior pointed his blade at Stefan, who stood, face blank, empty and staring. “Without your Covenant any of our race could have ruled, but you’ve preferred to cringe in the shadows.”

  “Your time was over a millennium ago.”

  Melchior shook his head. “No. Look across the ocean and see the rulers the cattle choose for themselves. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini ... The cattle beg to be controlled. If I only offer my hand, they will willingly wrap it around their own throats. My time is just beginning.” He took the blade and brought it up to Iago’s neck. “It is your time that is over.”

  Iago finally looked up into Melchior’s eyes and said, “Because of you, the time of our race will be over.”

  Melchior raised the blade and sliced through Iago’s neck. The body fell against its bonds as Iago’s head toppled from his shoulders. The body twitched a few times, spraying the wall behind it with tarlike blood.

  Melchior stepped back, shaking his head as if in disgust. He turned away from the corpse and faced Aristaeus. “Take another of my servants and dispose of the bodies.”

  Aristaeus’ countenance had nearly returned to human form. “What about him, Master?” He nodded slightly at Stefan.

  “Detective Ryzard is nothing but an empty shell now. Forget about him.”

  Aristaeus nodded and left to fetch another thrall to help him dispose of Iago and Rose Wallace.

  15

  Tuesday, February 23

  Nuri Lapidos had come off of suspension only a day before someone found the body of “Number Seven,” an unidentified woman. The tension in the rest of the city had filtered down into the squad-room. Everyone talked about “The Phantom of Kingsbury Run.”

  When he heard the talk around him, the bogus confessions, the innumerable tips and leads that went nowhere, the inability to identify the body, he could almost sense the presence of the unnatural. He could almost hear the superstition in the other detective’s voices.

  Nuri was still on probation, sitting behind a desk filling out paperwork, ignoring the ache of his barely-healed chest. He tried not to think about what was going on around him. He tried not to think of Iago....

  What could he do? Stefan had disappeared, presumably to act upon Iago’s direction. Iago had disappeared, too. And yet another corpse turned up. Nuri couldn’t help but think that it would be Iago and Stefan who would be turning up next.

  No one was going to stop Eric Dietrich.

  BOOK THREE

  June 1937—August 1939

  THE WAGES

  OF SIN

  1

  Sunday, June 6

  Aristaeus disposed of the bodies in different places. It was months before the body of the woman was found, after it had been reduced to little more than a dismembered skeleton. It would be years before Iago’s bones would be discovered in a Youngstown dump.

  In one sense, Stefan was aware of this. His memory was still intact, and he was aware of what went on around him. In another sense Stefan wasn’t even conscious. What thoughts crossed his conscious mind weren’t his own.

  Information from the outside world fell on his ears, as Dietrich’s thralls talked around him. And while he heard the words, the ideas attached sank into his memory without a trace. Those words weren’t commands by the Master, and therefore they weren’t important.

  But he heard and saw, even though his thoughts were a blank void.

  He was in the basement of a house that stood somewhere in a Slovenian neighborhood around East Fifty-Fifth, near the St. Clair area where he had grown up. Down here with him, sitting around a card table, was Simon Aristaeus. Two others sat across from him, both former members of the Mayfield Road Mob.

  “So that body was yours, eh?” said the one on the right. Aristaeus called him Dante. As he spoke, he tossed a few red chips into a pile in the center of the table.

  “Nah,” Aristaeus said, tossing a like number of chips into the pile. “Call.” He looked at the other two and added, “Raise you five.” He tossed in a blue chip.

  The Italian on the left, who Aristaeus had called Tito, shook his head and folded his cards on the table. “I thought you took the knife to her?”

  “See you,” Dante said, tossing in his own blue chip. “Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Aces over tens,” Aristaeus said, spreading his cards on the table. Dante said “Fuck,” dropping his hand, as Aristaeus pulled the pot over to his side of the table. “No, I just dropped off the body. I saw the Master Himself separate her neck. Anything I did was just to make it easy to move the dead bitch around.”

  Dante gathered the cards, shuffled, and began dealing. “Does that ever worry you?”

  “What?” Aristaeus said, picking up his cards, one at a time.

  “That He kills His own like that?” Dante said, finishing the deal and picking up his cards.

  Aristaeus snorted, shaking his head and tossing a red chip into the pot. The others followed suit. “Two,” he said, tossing a pair of cards in front of him. “Why should it worry me? I serve Him, that’s what matters.”

  “Three,” Tito said. “Didn’t she also? She was the one who brought Iago to Him, wasn’t she?”

  “Dealer takes one,” Dante said.

  “She allowed herself to become contaminated with another’s blood. She wasn’t purely the Master’s any more.” Aristaeus glanced across at the dealer and tossed in a white chip. “Ten.”

  “Shit,” Dante muttered.

  “Here,” Tito tossed in his own white chip and leaned over the table. “Now wait a minute. How many effing times have we watched Him take apart one of his rivals, and feed us the poor bastard’s blood?”

  “That’s different,” Aristaeus said. He looked across at Dante who was still looking at his cards. “Well?” he said.

  “Give me a minute,” Dante said.

  “How the hell is it different?”

  “First off, the bastard’s dead when He offers us his blood. Second, He always takes first, it becomes his blood ...”

  “Okay, see you and raise ten,” Dante said.

  Aristaeus tossed in another white chip without comment.

  “Then why don’t it become ours—Tito looked across at Dante. ”What, you think I’m crazy? Fold
.”

  Dante smiled, “Jacks over kings. There.”

  Aristaeus shook his head, “Four threes.”

  “Fuck,” Dante said.

  Aristaeus turned to Tito and said, “It don’t become ours because we aren’t a thousand years older and more powerful than anything we drink from, got it?” He pulled the pot in toward himself. “It’s about power.”

  “So if we drank from the White Zombie over there,” Tito pointed at Stefan, “we’d be all right?”

  Aristaeus laughed as he took the cards. “You’d be in no danger of handing your soul over, but I’d still think you’d piss off the Master.” He shuffled and said, “Change of pace, five card stud.”

  Dante sighed.

  As Aristaeus dealt out the first two cards, Tito kept looking in Stefan’s direction, as if he’d just noticed him standing in the corner of the basement. “What’s the zombie’s story?” Tito asked. “Don’t he ever talk?”

  “He’s the Master’s pet, and no, he don’t ever talk. Now ante up, you got the king.”

  Chips flew into the center of the table.

  “He was a cop, right?” Dante asked.

  Aristaeus nodded. “And he tried to blow the Master up.”

  As the third card was dealt out, Tito looked over at Stefan and said, “Sometimes I don’t understand our boss.”

  “King-ten bets,” Aristaeus said.

  Tito tossed in a chip. “Why’s He kill one of His own, and bring over someone who tried to kill Him?”

  “Don’t ask questions like that,” Dante said. “You were supposed to be in on a hit on Him, remember?”

  Tito shrugged, “I’m entitled to wonder, ain’t I?”

  “You want to know why?” Aristaeus said as he dealt out another card. “Because it amuses Him.” Aristaeus tilted his head toward Stefan. “That fella especially.”

  “Why him?” Tito asked, tossing his bet.

  Dante looked at Tito’s hand and said, “Fuck,” again. He flipped his cards over and said, “Fold.”

  “I think because he was a Catholic.” Aristaeus tossed in his bet and dealt out another card.

  “So, I’m a Catholic.” Tito tossed in a chip, “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I ain’t fighting your pair of tens with this crap.” Aristaeus folded his hand. Tito drew in the pot and Dante said, “Finally, someone else wins a hand.”

  “So?” Tito said.

  “This guy here had some faith, Tito,” Aristaeus said. “Enough so when he held up a cross, it was painful. He was the kind who think we’re spawn of the devil, sold our souls.”

  Tito looked over at Stefan again and said, “No wonder he don’t talk much.”

  Dante looked up at a clock on the wall and said, “I think it’s time.”

  “What? Can’t we go another hand now I’m finally winning?”

  “Dante’s right,” Aristaeus said.

  Tito dropped the cards and cursed.

  “Let’s get the zombie and go,” Dante said. “I’ve lost enough here.”

  The trio, Tito somewhat reluctantly, walked over and led Stefan out of the basement and to a waiting car.

  The summer night wrapped itself around the dark sedan as it slid through the empty dark streets of the east side. It drove south toward the train tracks. Their final destination was a warehouse that stood near the tracks a short distance from the East Fifty-Fifth railyard, also a short distance from the now-infamous Kingsbury Run.

  The warehouse appeared dark and empty, but there was a lot next to it that was hidden from view by a twelve-foot fence plastered with old cryptic posters. They drove around through a large gate that slid aside for them at the last minute.

  On the other side, the sedan found a space for itself in a crowd of similar cars. Dozens of people walked through the lot, between the cars, toward the gaping maw of the loading bays. In the back of Stefan’s mind burned a memory of a different warehouse, a smaller one near the docks. But the memory didn’t burn enough to make it to the front part of his mind.

  He followed Dante, Tito, and Aristaeus through the pale crush of people. Memory tried to assert itself whenever he passed a face that bore some familiarity, this one a reporter for the News, this other man a member of the city council, the third another detective, this fourth a local thug into the protection racket. Just passing them he could feel, in his gut, in the air he breathed, the difference between those who still wore a human form and those who had become damned completely, like him.

  Somewhere he feared—not for the walking dead that accompanied him to the warehouse, gone already—a small piece of him feared for those that still lived. He feared for the ones who had not yet tumbled off the precipice into the abyss of the damned.

  He feared, but he could not pray.

  The maw of the loading bays took in the advancing crowd twelve abreast. The procession advanced in silence. The silence was out of reverence for, and fear of, the dark messiah they had come here to worship. They filled the darkened chamber, hundreds strong.

  The only noise was a repetitive moaning that came, not from the silent throng, but from men and women who were chained to the support beams evenly spaced through the crowd. There were easily a dozen of these captives in place around Stefan, naked, heads covered by sacks, four to a post, facing each point of the compass, arms drawn back so far around the girder that the joints must be broken.

  Stefan had been present, with the others, waiting, for fifteen minutes or so before he heard the doors behind them rattle shut. The faithful were all here.

  For a few moments the warehouse was completely dark, the only sounds those of the moaning captives. Then a voice came from the darkness, a deep, instantly recognizable voice.

  “Welcome, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.”

  A light shone upon a raised platform in front of the crowd. And there stood Melchior, arms outstretched as if in blessing. Even the moans seemed to cease in deference to the timbre of Melchior’s voice.

  “Welcome, those bound to my service.” Melchoir lowered his arms. He was tall, and his hair hung loose around his shoulders. He wore a crimson robe that hung around him like a bishop’s garb. On a small table before him was a long blade and a goblet. He took the goblet in one hand, and held the other over it. The skin of that hand split apart and blood wept from the wound into it.

  “This is my blood, which has granted you eternal life. Drink it in my service.”

  Melchior held the cup aloft and lights came on, illuminating the pillars with the twisted, captive bodies chained upon them. Stefan could feel the edge of madness cut into the room, under Melchoir’s bidding. In himself he felt the perverse hunger grow.

  “This is my flesh,” Melchoir said. “It is time to renew our communion. Feed, my children, and be sated.”

  At those words, it was as if someone had opened the gates of hell within that warehouse. The whole crowd descended upon the pillars as one. Stefan found himself within the horrid mob, tearing tooth and claw into the flesh of the chained captives, letting the bright, burning, living blood spill over his hands, his face, his mouth. Melchior’s children climbed over themselves to reach the human victims, to sink their teeth into some yet-unmolested piece of flesh.

  Even those who still lived, who didn’t need the living blood to survive, joined the frenzy, tearing into the flesh with their bare hands.

  Stefan fell away from the girder as soon as the gnawing hunger was no longer a force within him. Falling back he could see his victim. The frenzied crowd still undulated at the base of the pillar like some crimson multiheaded beast. Rising above it, where there had been a human being, was now just a bloody skeleton held together with strips of sinew.

  Even through the empty, dead chambers of his mind, Stefan could feel the disgust and self-loathing coming from the small part of him that was still himself.

  In front of the platform, a select group of Melchior’s faithful had gathered to drink from his goblet. A dozen of the new and the fa
vored were able to feed from the master himself.

  As the frenzy faded, and the crowd withdrew from their feeding, Melchior again drew attention toward the platform. A light illuminated the back of the platform, an area that had been in darkness until now.

  A body hung upside-down, dangling from a chain anchored in the ceiling. Melchior raised His knife and announced, “Here is a traitor to the blood. A keeper of a false Covenant.”

  The Master cataloged the multitude of sins committed by the creature chained behind Him. All amounted to being a vampire outside Melchior’s fealty. Stefan saw the Master raise His blade and remove the creature’s head. But by the time the head fell on the platform, and Melchior took the victim’s blood, Stefan had withdrawn in himself past the point where the scene held any significance.

  2

  Monday, June 7

  “No chance it could be Stefan Ryzard?” Nuri asked Sam Gerber, the coroner. Gerber had been elected successor to Pearse, and Nuri suspected it was because the small man looked at home in a morgue.

  Nuri had come down here after hearing that they had found a number eight.

  On the table before him Gerber had laid out an incomplete set of skeletal remains. His gloved hands touched the skull, briefly making him resemble a twisted Hamlet. He shook his head, looking at Nuri through thick glasses. “No. This was a woman, shorter, and a Negro.”

  “But she belongs on the list?”

  “If you want, you can see the marks on the vertebrae where the knife—”

  “No, thanks,” Nuri said, turning away. “I should go.”

  Gerber continued to talk about when his final report would be ready. Nuri just nodded his head as he left, not really listening.

  He had come down here expecting to find Stefan. He didn’t know why he felt Stefan would end up on the list. It seemed that the decapitation was saved for special categories of Eric Dietrich’s victims, and from his expedition to the swamp, Nuri knew that they weren’t finding all of the bodies.