by Jack Conner
The smoking car remained where it had been, but the patchwork man was gone.
* * *
They raced desperately, heading in the general direction the Archminister’s convoy had been driving. They rode up streets and down streets, straining their ears to hear the distinctive rumbling of those three expensive autos. Stevrin feared the worst had happened and they’d lost the convoy. If that had occurred, it might have been the end of his career working for Agatha outside of the Divinity, and the end of his investigation, too. He didn’t think McKinley would let him stick around long enough to await another try, and after the experience with the freak that had attacked them he wasn’t sure if he could convince any of the boys to risk another tail-job anyway.
At last he remembered what McKinley had told him. “To the Ivies!” he said. “They’re going to the Ivies!”
They started pedaling in the direction of the Ivy Quarter. Stevrin wasn’t quite sure where it was at first, but shortly he recognized a few distinctive landmarks that even he knew—the Academy of St. Ulgrest, the statue of the Dog-Man. The streets were flat and traffic lights marked every intersection; Stevrin and the boys ignored the traffic lights, but he figured the Archminister would obey them. That was one point in Stevrin’s favor, at least.
Around him, the buildings changed from offices and shops to fancy brownstones, then mansions. Towering oaks clawed at the sky, and their branches formed a canopy overhead. Such profusions of beautiful trees were rare in the Uppers, but Stevrin wasn’t in the mood to appreciate them.
His ears strained ...
The streets lay quiet. But then, at last, and with great relief, he heard the familiar rumbling of the convoy.
“Thank the gods,” he said, pedaling toward the sounds. Sweat dripped down his hair to his back, then slid down his shoulder blades to the crack of his ass. His shirt stuck to the narrow of his back. His armpits were like rivers. His legs burned.
The sounds grew louder. Finally the streets opened up and Stevrin saw all three cars, just then approaching a gateway in a white wall. The high concrete wall surrounded what looked like a heavily-treed property, the grounds of some mansion or other. A guard was just gesturing the limousines inside. If Stevrin and his boys had arrived thirty seconds later, the cars would have been lost to sight.
He pulled his bike to a stop, staring at the high white wall. His chest rose and fell. “There’s no getting in through the front,” he panted. “It’ll have to be over the wall.”
“Shit,” Harry said. Then, screwing up his courage: “Well, I’ll go.”
Stevrin was impressed, but he shook his head. “You’re already banged up.” Blood still leaked from a cut on Harry’s scalp, and more blood seeped from his knees. “You stay behind and guard the bikes. Jack and I will go over.”
“If Harry wants to go, far be it from me to get in his way,” Jack said.
“You’re comin’ with me,” Stevrin said.
Jack sighed.
Stevrin clapped them both on the shoulders. “I’ll make you two captains of the Whoresons.”
Jack and Harry traded doubtful looks at each other.
Stevrin studied the area. Huge pieces of walled property, all containing mansions, lined the street.
WAYWEND BLVD. read the street sign. Great trees arched overhead. The boys found a likely looking copse of trees and hid their bikes. Harry lit a cigarette and began his watch. “Good luck,” he said, without a trace of a smile. Jack and Stevrin nodded grimly. The two made their way across the street and down, to the fence of the property the convoy had vanished into. A plate in the wall read 904. The boys were long familiar with burglary, and Jack gamely crouched and cupped his hands. Stevrin stepped into them, and Jack launched him to the wall-top. Next Stevrin hauled him up, and the pair slipped noiselessly down the other side. “This is fucked,” Jack whispered. “You realize that?”
“Yeah. Now shut up.”
They edged through the bushes and trees toward the center of the grounds.
“Ew,” Jack hissed. “What stinks?”
Stevrin noticed it, too—a dry, bitter, musty odor. He glanced around him uneasily, sniffing. The smell seemed to emanate from the trees. As he passed them, he noticed that they were slightly deformed, weird and twisted, with a branch so thick it didn’t look like it could support its weight, and strange, knotty formations. Roots like fat snakes slithered into the ground, and Stevrin had to raise his feet to clear them.
“Givin’ me the creeps,” Jack whispered.
Stevrin didn’t say so, but he agreed. “Can it,” he said.
He fully expected to see guards, and he was not disappointed. Just as he and Jack neared the clearing around the mansion, the crunch of leaves alerted him. He grabbed Jack’s arm and hauled him backward, deeper into the trees—just in time. Four dark figures stalked past. Stevrin couldn’t see them well in the dim light, but he caught the reek of herbs and chemicals.
“Homunculi,” he whispered when they were past.
“Damn it,” said Jack. “I hate homuncs. I knew this was a bad idea.”
“Yeah, well, there’s nothing for it.”
Stevrin edged closer to the clearing, and Jack followed with obvious reluctance. At last they peered through the bushes at the wide swath of lawn that encircled the mansion. And mansion it was, huge and white and resplendent. A wide circular drive swept to the pillared canopy that jutted from its white marble façade. Little angels and cupids frolicked tastefully in the corners and above high white arches. The three limos had pulled up to the main doors, and the three chauffeurs stood huddled together for warmth, smoking and talking quietly. Their passengers must have already gone inside.
Looking at the shivering chauffeurs, Stevrin realized just how cold it really was. His blood had been rushing so fast he’d barely registered it. Reminded of it, the cold bit at him, and he couldn’t resist a shudder.
“Fuckballs,” hissed Jack suddenly.
Stevrin saw it, too. It was almost too dark to see them, but if one peered closely one could see three dark shapes crouched along the side of the mansion, still as statues.
“More homuncs,” Stevrin said. “Great.”
“Maybe they’re only on one side,” Jack suggested.
The boys made a circle around the mansion, dodging the homunculi patrols and stepping over the twisting roots of the bitter-smelling trees, but there were three homunc sentries stationed along every wall but the front, and with all the angels and statuary on the façade, as well as the chauffeurs, Stevrin wouldn’t dare risk an attempt at the front in any case.
“Fine,” he said, “then we do it the hard way. I’ve never seen so many damned homuncs in one place since the war.” He and Jack were in the bushes at the southeast corner. In the rear of the mansion stretched a hedge maze, and a garden that was now wilted and ugly with the onset of winter. All the vegetation looked withered and strange, twisted and deformed. It was almost as if something in the ground had tainted them. The ones nearest the mansion looked the most warped, and Stevrin began to wonder if something in the building was causing it. He remembered McKinley’s talk of strangeness and weird chanting, and he sucked in a breath.
Jack looked at him skeptically. “What’s the hard way?”
Stevrin told him. Jack grew pale. “It’s the only way,” Stevrin said.
“I don’t know ...”
“Do it for Sasha and Balard.”
“Balard was an ass. So was Sasha.”
“Then do it for me.”
Jack groaned. “Fuck. How are we gonna get out of here if we go separately? We need each other to hoist the other over.”
That was a good question, but not unsolvable. The next twenty minutes saw them scampering about the grounds, dodging patrols, tearing limbs off dry, strange trees, then going to the wall and laying their prizes against the wall, their bases embedded in the ground, so as to create a way to climb up the wall. At last they created two such escape routes. All the while, the wind picked up
, and it howled ominously over the peaks and gables of the mansion. Stevrin thought he could catch something even more sinister over the wind, some sort of singing ... The bitter smell sharpened.
When they were ready, the boys returned to the south side of the mansion, hunkered down and waited for the homunculi patrol to pass by.
When it did, Stevrin said, “Now.”
Jack hesitated. His face was bone-white, and beaded with sweat. His eyes were wide, unblinking. His face and hands were too still.
“Pretend like it’s a movie,” Stevrin said. He and Jack shared a love of B-movies.
Jack nodded tightly but didn’t look convinced. With no more ado, he sprang out of the bushes and rushed toward the mid-point of the wall. The homunculi waited for him to get close, perhaps thinking he had not seen them. Then, as one, they leapt to their feet and lunged toward him. At the last second, he stumbled back, reversed direction, and darted off into the undergrowth, not fifteen feet from Stevrin. The homunculi pursued him, clutching at him with their glistening black talons and shaking the bushes with their passage. Jack yelped but kept going, vanishing into the deformed trees. Stevrin sent out a silent prayer to any god that might be listening for Jack to get out safely.
As soon as they were gone, Stevrin hunched low and sped across the open area between vegetation and mansion. Hairs stood up on the nape of his neck. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake.
He reached the mansion and shimmied up the storm drain he’d settled on; there was a window close to it through which he’d seen dim lights. Wind buffeted him as he inched higher. He thought of the patchwork man and made himself go faster. His legs, already aching, flared, and he dragged himself up mainly with his arms.
Reaching the second-story window, he swung himself over so that he clung to the window ledge. The drapes were drawn, but there was a half-inch part, right in the middle, where the two panels met. That’s probably why he’d seen the lights, if there had been any. Holding on tight, he peered in.
At first he could see little. If there had been any lights, they were certainly dim.
Then, gradually, by the vague moonslight that crept in through the windows, as well as by the alchemical lanterns in the room, he began to make out the details, and when he did he nearly fell off the ledge to the hard ground below. He gasped and had to struggle not to release his bladder.
The first thing he noticed was that he wasn’t peering into a simple upstairs bedroom or hallway. Far from it. The entire mansion had been hollowed out, or perhaps the outside walls were just a shell. Either way, contained within those ornate walls was one huge open area with an earthen floor. Rearing from the center and taking up most of the space was a great mound of some sort, a kind of hill. Stevrin stared at it, squinting, and made out odd protrusions and slabs that fell over other slabs, and weird stalks sticking out in places. The mound was not of dirt, and not of stone. If he looked at it closely enough, it seemed to move, just slightly ...
Eerie figures danced and spun on the mound’s summit, which was close to Stevrin’s level, but Stevrin could not see them very well. They seemed strangely proportioned. Wearing hooded robes, they danced through the forest of thin weird stalks that crowned the gray hill like trees, and in their very center, from the hill’s peak, jutted a small round protrusion, a mound atop the larger mound, but of a piece with it.
On the ground of the great chamber, Stevrin saw the three Ministers that had arrived by limousine confer with three other people. These wore hooded robes like the ones on the hill, with the cowls draped low over their faces, and Stevrin received the impression of some sort of priests or monks. The central one seemed to be the leader. Though not tall, he was the least human-looking of them, with a strangely lumpy body that made his robes bulge out in places. His head was twice the size it should be, one half larger than the other, and he walked with a slight limp on bare feet that were of different sizes and had various bulges sticking out from them.
The Ministers bowed to these men, showing deference—even Archminister Barnes, head of the Guild, wealthiest man in the nation, killer of countless people. Stevrin just shook his head.
Slimmer, presumably younger robed figures stood nearby, holding alchemical lanterns that emitted low green lights.
Stevrin’s arms ached, and he hitched one of his ankles up on to the ledge to ease some of the burden. Even so, he knew he couldn’t last in this position forever. He hoped Jack was keeping the homunculi occupied.
The robed men turned from the Ministers and led the way up the side of the great, weird mound, having to zigzag up steep sides, like a switchback on a mountain road. Heads lowered, the Ministers followed, Barnes the foremost one. The junior robed figures lit the way ahead of them with their green lights. The alchemical lamps threw the eerie protrusions of the mound into relief and made long shadows stretch out from the stalks. To Stevrin’s shock, he could see now that the mound looked as if it were composed not of stone or clay or earth or brick or metal ... but of gray flesh.
The robed men—the priests—joined the dancing, spinning figures in the stalk forest at the summit of the hill, and Stevrin heard eerie piping and saw that some of the figures held flute-like instruments to their lips, though the music that issued from them did not sound like it issued from any flutes he knew. The central priest lifted his head, and strange, foreign words rang out.
Down below, there came a stirring. Two lines of robed figures formed, and between them stood a figure different from the others, a boy somewhat younger than Stevrin, maybe thirteen or fourteen. He appeared to be naked, and alchemical tattoos glowed red on his body in the form of characters or letters, but in no language Stevrin had ever seen, and they marked the boy at intervals from his feet to his forehead.
The lines of robed figures escorted him up the sides of the mound in what looked like a ritualistic procession, the figures humming and perhaps praying as they went. The piping and chanting above increased in volume and pace. Stevrin’s heart quickened. So did the dancing.
He saw by the light of alchemical lamps and the boy’s own tattoos that the boy was as strangely proportioned as the central robed figure that had met the Guildsmen. Odd lumps and growths sprouted from his tattooed skin, and one of his hands was large and awkward-looking, while the other was normal. His skin looked grayish and weird, bearing an odd resemblance to the mound he walked on. He strode with a heavy, somber gate, but he did not lower his head. His face, despite his other deformities, was very handsome.
As he neared the circle of dancers and flutists above, he slowed. The dancers ceased their movements and turned to him. The central priest said some words Stevrin could not catch—they appeared to be in that foreign tongue again—and the boy stepped forward into the clearing in the stalk forest, then laid himself down on the smaller mound Stevrin had noticed. Like an altar.
Wind howled around the mansion, and Stevrin shivered.
One of the robed figures produced what looked like a machete.
“No,” Stevrin said, unable to stop himself. No one heard, of course.
The man with the blade stepped toward the boy, who did not try to run.
“No,” Stevrin, repeated, shaking his head. Something twisted inside him, and he felt sick.
The figures on top of the mound, even the Ministers, gathered eagerly around the boy, and Stevrin thought Shitshitshit. What could he do? He didn’t even have a gun.
“Ignith a’su mra kana-nayoth!” said the central priest—the high priest, Stevrin thought.
“Ignith a’su mra kana-nayoth!” the others repeated.
This was repeated, louder and louder, faster and faster, and then, before Stevrin’s eyes, the man with the machete raised his blade overhead
“Sig’na i Yreg-ngad!” the high priest shouted.
“Sig’na i Yreg-ngad!”
“Re tul a Gadra-huum!”
“Re tul a Gadra-huum!”
“VRU SUG!” the high priest roared.
The blade flashed down.
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One of the boy’s arms fell to the floor, and a thin spurt of grayish blood shot out. One of the robed men scooped the limb up, and before Stevrin’s horrified gaze, the priest gnawed on it. Several others gathered around him, and they stood side by side chewing like hyenas on the boy’s severed arm.
The boy didn’t scream, didn’t cry out. Rigid and shaking, he stared straight up, to the ceiling or maybe to the imagined stars beyond, as the man with the machete raised his blade again, and again brought it down. This time a leg fell to the floor and was instantly snatched up. As if famished, more men snatched it up and began to feed. The wound barely seemed to bleed.
Stevrin tasted bile in the back of his throat. No, he thought. This cant’ be happening. What are they DOING?
The man with the machete hacked off the boy’s limbs one by one until he was completely dismembered, and the men in robes tore at the flesh of his arms and legs like starved vultures. A single tear coursed down from the boy’s right eye, and his lips quivered. Stevrin wanted to rage, to scream.
But it wasn’t over yet.
For, just as the Ministers and the priests lowered their grisly meals and wiped their dripping chins, the man that must be high priest lifted his head and shouted more strange words, and the altar-mound the boy lay on opened up and swallowed him.
Stevrin hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a hair-thin fissure running the length of the altar-mound, right down its center. Now that fissure widened, and the mound yawned like a mouth. It opened, and the boy fell, disappearing into the aperture with a single, startled scream. As the maw snapped shut, the whole mass of the greater mound shook, and the priests cried out in joy. Then, as Stevrin stared, the men on the mound, priests and Ministers and flutists alike, dropped to the ground and rolled around upon it in what looked like delirium.
All except for the high priest, who suddenly wheeled about and stared toward the spot where Stevrin clung to the window.
Stevrin swung back to the drainage pipe and shimmied down the drain, as swiftly as he could. Even as homunculi burst from the foliage, he ran, fast as his legs would carry him. Sweat flew from his brow, and his whole body shook. Shit shit shit shit shit.