by Kevin Wright
“You wouldn’t even have to lift a finger.”
“Yes, precisely. Glacier ice doth run through my bastard veins. Yes, he would simply die, given time, and for once, it would be easy,” Detective Winters said. “But as you know, it is never easy. And so he turns, Carmine, he turns. And this cannot be allowed. Like the Masque of the Red—”
“Spare me your fucking analogies,” Carmine spat. “He’s just a kid. A stupid kid but a good one. There’s got to be something, someone to help him, to slow it, maybe, something.” He pulled two bottles of beer out of the refrigerator, sat down, and plunked them on the table. He cracked one open and snapped the cap into the trash can. He took a long, hard pull.
Detective Winters glanced at the other bottle on the table. “I don’t drink.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Carmine wiped his mouth. “Look, I took him to see the Padre, to see what he’d say. Mentioned something about killing the head vampire, called her the queen. Said it might stop it, the disease.”
“This is not Dungeons and Dragons, Carmine,” Detective Winters said. “This is real. Killing the queen won’t end it. Even an amateur like Lonigan knows that. I’ve killed hundreds of them, Carmine, but only with these two hands. Even if you could find the queen and somehow kill her, it would stop nothing. Another would take her place. And still, Peter would turn. And you know where he would go, Carmine. You know.” Detective Winters shook his head in disgust. “Lonigan offered the lie, but you are the one who swallowed it.”
“Fuck you.” Carmine killed his beer then cracked open the other. He took a pull off of it, wiped his mouth.
Detective Winters just sat watching.
“So, that’s it, huh? Kid’s done, then?”
“The moon waxes with each of its passes, and Peter’s life wanes. On Thursday it will have been one week. By then, for certain, but most likely sooner. Three, usually four days at the most. You know. They all end the same,” Detective Winters said, “with a ferry across the Styx, and the myths lie, Carmine. Charon requires no tolls, only passengers.”
Carmine took another pull. “Well, he shouldn’t have to pay for my fuck-ups. Just a kid, a damned unlucky kid. Shit.”
“Carmine, I came to you for two reasons.” Detective Winters withdrew a roll of cloth from within his coat. He placed it on the kitchen table.
“Put it away.” Carmine pointed with his beer.
Detective Winters unrolled it, revealing a silver dagger and three sharp steel stakes. Detective Winters pushed them across the table. He looked up. “This is the first reason.”
“Put them away.”
“For him,” Detective Winters said. “You are his friend. You could make it painless.”
“I said put them, the fuck, away!” He flung his beer, shattering against the wall.
“You could make it quick, in any event.” Detective Winters didn’t even blink. “If the police catch him first, and they are looking, Carmine. He is no junky-suck; they know where he will go, and they will find him, given time, and they will put him down. But they will put him to the question first.” Detective Winters frowned. “I know he knows nothing. You know he knows nothing. They even know he knows nothing. But they will torture him for the sheer pleasure of the act. For practice. Bragging rights. It is their way, and it is effective.”
“I can’t.” Carmine was at the fridge again, bottles clattering. “I … I can’t do it.” Carmine cracked another one. “He’s a good kid.”
“Irrelevant.”
Carmine closed his eyes. “No.”
“Then who better to do it?” He backhanded the bottle from Carmine’s hand. It shattered.
“Who then, Carmine? Some stranger who does it not for the good but because of the badge he wears? Because he likes inflicting pain? So he might brag to his friends over beers later that night?”
Carmine cracked and pounded down another and then another. “I’m gonna keep drinking till you disappear.”
“Perhaps what I ask is inhuman. What I do certainly is. And perhaps you are correct in your estimation of me. Perhaps I do not hate it. But what I do, I do because no one else will. You know what is out there, Carmine.” Detective Winters fixed Carmine with his cold blue eyes. “We cannot allow this wound to fester and jeopardize others, innocents.”
“The only innocents in this town are in the grave or on their way.”
Detective Winters nodded. “Perhaps I was wrong about you.”
“Perhaps. So screw-off.” Carmine took a deep breath and examined his beer bottle in great detail.
Detective Winters peered close at Carmine. “Where have you been in the past four hours?”
“Look, Winters, you can shove it!” Carmine said. “I don’t have to tell you shit. You may be right about Peter, and you may be a cop, but I’m not telling you—”
Detective Winters rose, and despite his height, he towered. “This is not about Peter. This is about the Devourer of Souls.”
“The Soul … Biter?” Carmine laughed. “You come up with that? Sounds like a lame punk band, or something.”
“It is what he is called on the street. He is known by other names, in other places. But he is here, in this city, and in this city he is the Devourer of Souls. He is shunned even by the ghouls.”
Carmine paused. “The one who killed Emily?”
“Yes, but not only killed, Carmine,” Detective Winters said. “He took her soul. He stripped it slick and kicking, screaming from her body.”
Detective Winters raised a hand. “Do not ask. I do not know what means he uses to accomplish this. The pain she experienced in the last few moments of life compares not to what she experiences every moment in her death. I shall end that. What the Devourer of Souls does requires power.”
“How much power?”
“Where have you been today?”
“Why?”
“Because I have hunted the Devourer of Souls these past years, and I have finally gained his scent. Insanity, fear, hate, vengeance, mad-hunger, desperation, he reeks of it. Intimate now, we have become, he and I, and I can smell him, even now, Carmine, upon you.”
Chapter 18.
THE BISHOP OF COLTON FALLS was a decrepit old man. Aimlessly he plugged away at a calculator as ancient as he. His body was wasted nearly to that of a skeleton enshrouded by a thin caul of liver-spotted, paper skin. There were reasons for this decrepitude, reasons too numerous to count. Once a hale man, even in his early and mid- seventies, he was now but a whisper of his former self.
Worries. Worries, like cancer, ate away at his bones, chewing the very marrow from within to without. He took a deep breath from the oxygen mask he kept on his desk. Those worm-eaten bones, crooked and bent, bore the weight, though, for now.
The church had seen better days. Scandals. Death. And more scandals. The glory was fading. The truth lost. Trust evaporated. All that survived were tabloid stories that claimed horror and the newspapers and depositions that proved it. Despite his wasted body, his tired sagging frame, despite the tissue paper skin that clung to his flesh, the Bishop’s eyes still burned when he was angered. They burned now because of the man who had stepped through the door and stood now before him.
“Sons, here, I have raised and reared, but they have disowned me,” the Bishop quoted as the man stepped before him. The room was immaculate. Books lined the walls, and not a mote of dust touched the Venetian blinds that glowed golden in the afternoon sun.
“It was you who disowned me, Tuley.” The Padre removed his hat. Confident, relaxed, he remained standing despite the chair next to him.
“I tried, at any rate, to help you, Brian,” the Bishop said.
“By banishing me?”
“No one sane wants the Colton Falls appointments.” The Bishop waved a hand. “They scramble for transfers as soon as they get here. Why should you be any different?”
“Because it is here that I have found my calling. It is here that help is needed most.”
“You’re a joke,
Brian.” The Bishop wheezed as he spoke, as he breathed. “You didn’t use to be, but you are now. So much potential. Wasted. You gallivant about like some half-ass superhero trying to save the world. Look how you dress. You’re a disgrace.”
“A man’s raiment is no measure of his worth,” the Padre said. “It is a man’s deeds weighed upon the scales, your eminence, and it is not I that disgraces. Once you were a great teacher, as well as leader, Tuley.”
The Bishop’s burning gaze quavered for a second, but he held it.
The Padre did not blink. “Yes, I say leader. Not like the leaders of today.” He said the word ‘leaders’ the way most people say tapeworm. “Manager would be a more fitting term. A manager does not lead people, a manager drives subordinates before him until they fall, and break, and when they do, their corpses cushion his own fall. You have become a manager, Tuley. And too many managers preside over this era.”
The Bishop’s eyes glazed over, but tears did not run. “I do not use my people. I protect them, in ways, ways I cannot speak. Though the ways be subtle, they are there. Sacrifices are made, yes, but for the greater good. The dam may trickle in order that it not burst. But without the dam, all is lost.”
“Your land before your eyes strangers devour,” the Padre quoted. “Monsters have set upon this town and gripped it in fear, for decades. I have battled, and I will continue. The dam is gone, Tuley, and the town is flooded. People drown before your eyes, and you offer them a twig. Nay, I shall not quit this place.”
“You shall be excommunicated.”
“So be it then; it shall not stop me.”
“Why have you come before me, today of all days?” The Bishop breathed heavy. “You know the troubles I — our order faces.”
“It is a foul stew brewed with the souls of young boys. One many priests have tasted. They should pay. It was allowed, not deterred, not detested. Just moved. Moved to prey again. They should pay in blood.”
“To talk of your brothers so, times have changed,” the Bishop said. “Fifty years ago…”
“One hundred, one thousand years ago, and still it happened,” the Padre said, “but no one dared speak. Now eyes are open. Theirs, yours. The opening of eyes heralds the beginning of knowledge and wisdom, which promotes change. The one thing the Church has never dealt with, and it is the one constant throughout the millennia. Change, it is a fearsome word in these hallowed halls. It will be its doom.”
“You presume to educate me?”
“I presume to open your eyes.”
“You know nothing of my travails!” The Bishop struggled to his feet. “The tests, the trials I’ve endured, the words, lies, the abominations! All for the church. For it. Everything for it. It will survive. It must survive. The world and the people need it.” He collapsed back in his chair, sucking hard on his oxygen mask. He raised a hand. “I am fine. No, listen, wait, Brian.”
“Are you alright?”
The Bishop waved a hand. He wheezed, slow, slower.
“I did it for you, Brian,” the Bishop said finally. “To protect you. I thought if I sent you away, you would be spared the condemnation that surely awaits. You could do so much—”
“He that believeth not is condemned already,” the Padre quoted.
“Go with God, then, Brian.” The Bishop slumped. “Do your work. Do it well. And when the black shadow of death creeps beneath your skin, remember that we talked here today, and I gave you a chance to leave. Now ask of me what you will and be gone.”
“Can the disease be cured?”
The Bishop hesitated.
“You know what disease, Tuley. Is there a cure? Would killing the queen who propagates it end it?”
Fear lit upon the Bishop’s eyes. He looked down. “I … I think not. Do not try, Brian. For God’s sake, she would be but a shadow to your eyes, enlightened by God though they are. Yeah, your eyes would be a hindrance. She would strike you down, she, the Adh Seidh.”
“Adh Seidh?” the Padre frowned. “Mere folklore. Tell me what you know. Help me. Help your people. Give back what was lost.”
The Bishop looked down at his desk. He glanced up, about to speak, and the phone rang. It rang five times before the Bishop finally picked it up.
“Hello?” That was the only word the Bishop spoke. Then he just listened, eyes wide, trembling. Slowly then, shivering, he hung it up. The Bishop looked away.
“What is it?” the Padre asked.
Many deep breaths the Bishop took before he spoke, and when he did, he did so quietly. “There is much I cannot say. My soul is bound. Know this, though, Brian. Though the many branches in this tree you seek may grow in different directions, bearing different fruits, they erupt all from the same trunk. I … I will choose the fruit for you, though I think it folly. Killing her won’t stop it, Brian. Even if I…”
“Speak, Tuley.”
The Bishop’s voice slid to a whisper, “At the corner of Marsh and Wilbur street, tonight, just after sundown, a meeting will take place. At least one of them will be a vampire. A powerful one, one who knows such things as may benefit you, if you can pry them from his rotten skull. His name is Billy Rubin. He knows the one you seek.”
The Padre stood. “Who was that?”
“It was an old friend, Brian.” The Bishop did not look up. “I can say no more.”
Lips pursed, the Padre donned his black preacher’s hat. “Why tell me this? Now?”
“Because you ask, Brian. Because they want you to know. Because they want you to fail. And because, Brian, against all hope, I pray, pray you will succeed.” The Bishop looked up, then, into the Padre’s eyes. “But mostly, Brian, mostly it is because you are correct in your estimations. I am weak.”
* * * *
“Ronnie! Ronnie! Coffee! Now!” yelled the Chief, because that’s what he did.
Ronnie poked his head in the door. “Black, two sugars, Chief?”
“Yeah. Wait!” the Chief yelled. “Do we have Winters’s number?”
“In the rolodex, Chief,” Ronnie pointed at the rolodex on the Chief’s desk, “with all the other numbers.”
“Right.” The Chief dove in. He dialed Detective Winters’s cell phone. It rang. On the fourth ring, someone picked it up.
“AAAAHHHHRRRRGGG!!!!!!! LEGS!! BURN IN HELLLLLLL!!!!” screamed an inhuman voice which was quickly silenced with a loud, crack, and replaced by Detective Winters’s cold, strained voice.
“How can I help you?”
“Winters? This is the Chief, what the hell are you doing?!”
After a pause and a thwack, Detective Winters answered, “Taxes.”
“It’s November,” the Chief said, looking at his calendar.
“Then I am doing something else,” Detective Winters said. “Is this important? I am busy.” There were a few thumps in the background and then what sounded like someone thwacking a side of beef with a sledgehammer. All was accompanied by screams of pain and rage and fear.
The Chief drew the phone away from his ear, looking at it in a mixture of disgust and horror. “You okay? Winters? Winters!”
“What do you want?” Detective Winters asked, huffing.
“Got a tip tonight. About our serial killer. A good source.”
“What is it?” Detective Winters asked. The hammering started again, accompanied by more screaming.
“ARRRRRRR! It BURNS! RRRRRRRRRRG! FREEZES!”
Thwack! Thwack!
The Chief could barely hear him.
“Marsh and Wilbur, at sundown!” the Chief said. “The killer’s a dope addict! Going to be there for a buy! Winters?!”
Thwack!
“Who’s the source?”
“Never mind, Winters. You know I can’t divulge that.” The Chief smirked to himself; he had used the word ‘divulge.’
“Why? We are not in court,” Detective Winters said. The line went fuzzy.
The Chief frowned, tapping the phone. “Well, because I can’t. And I’m sending the monster squad with you.”
“I will not require them.”
“No dice, Winters. I’m Chief. What I say goes. Now be there and get this guy. I want the report on my desk tomorrow morning when I come in, and I want it to say you caught him!”
“Marduk’s balls!” Detective Winters roared in the background. There was a bang like the phone dropped then the sound of scuffling, a round being chambered followed by, blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!
Then nothing.
“Winters! Winters! You there? Hello? Hello!”
“I got it, Marsh and Wilbur,” Detective Winters said. “Sundown. M-Squad. Right? Tell them, crew room, four o’clock sharp. That all? Good—”
Before the Chief hung up, he heard a gun being loaded.
* * * *
The smooth lacquered wood was cool against his cheek. It was dark inside, though light was present still within the vast confines of the church. The stained glass windows still cast red and green and blue images upon some of the pews.
“Rrrg…” Peter doubled over, staggering in pain. Razor blades, rusted, broken, churned in his belly. Slowly, centimeter by centimeter, Peter could feel their jagged edges ripple along his intestinal tract. They cut as they went. “Urrrrg…” Peter bit his knuckles as he collapsed in the last row. Sweat pooled beneath his face and soaked his entire body. His clammy skin registered with pain every air molecule that bounced off it. Even the little sunlight filtering in seared his eyes through clamped lids.
“Please, just a minute, a second, stop.”
The violation beneath his skin had spread like a cancerous black octopus, reaching, searching, devouring. Halfway across his chest, his back, it had infested, growing, always growing. He could feel it now, the offense, the indignation, the rape. Rage simmered and grew in his chest, his stomach, until his body could contain it no more and it boiled up his throat, spuming out his mouth.
He screamed.
He screamed loud, and he screamed long, and those screams echoed, twisting, reverberating, shaking the very foundation of the church.
A seizure of hate welled up inside his body, and he lay quivering. He punched the back of the pew ahead of him. He did it again, and again, and again.