Darkwalker

CHAPTER 23

Lenoir did not exactly decide to ride to the hospital; he simply steered his horse there, without conscious thought. He needed a familiar face, and Bran Kody was just about the last person left in the Five Villages that Lenoir had spent any significant time with over the past few years. Pathetic, certainly, but a fact nonetheless, and so Lenoir made his way to Mindale Hospital, the only clinic in Kennian that the Metropolitan Police trusted to care for their own. If Kody was still alive, he would be here. It was probably too much to hope that the sergeant might be awake, but Lenoir could accept that. He had always found Kody’s company to be much more agreeable when the sergeant did not speak.

Lenoir was shown to a cramped little room at the end of a long, foul-smelling corridor. He found the physician bent over Kody’s cot, checking the patient’s pulse. Lenoir waited in the corridor.

“He’s alive,” the physician said as he quit the room.

Lenoir waited for him to elaborate, but he did not. “How is he? Will he recover?”

The physician shrugged. “Anyone’s guess. The stomach wound is all right, but the head wound—that’s another matter. He’ll either wake up, or he won’t.” So saying, he took his leave, his footsteps echoing along the barren walls.

Lenoir entered the room hesitantly. He found a stool jammed in the narrow space between the wall and the pallet on which the sergeant lay, and he perched on the edge of it, folding his fingers awkwardly in his lap. As his gaze took in the length of Kody’s prostrate form, something suspiciously like guilt tugged at the bottom of his stomach.

The sergeant’s features were cast in harsh relief, brushed in lamplight and chiseled out of shadow. Combined with the pallor of his skin, it gave him a ghoulish look, like a man hovering somewhere between life and death—which, Lenoir supposed, was exactly what he was. He was too tall for the pallet, his feet hanging over the edge in a position that would surely have been uncomfortable if he were awake. Lenoir rose from the stool and propped it under Kody’s feet. Bereft of any place to sit, he slumped against the wall.

How sentimental you have become, Lenoir. A week ago, you would not have bothered to visit this man at all. Now you fret over his circulation.

He was not really sure why he had come. To pass the time, he supposed, until darkness fell. It was better than being alone. Kody was alone too; his parents no longer lived in Kennian, and his fellow hounds were out scouring the streets for his attacker. Lenoir could have pointed them in the right direction, but Zera would certainly have fled by the time they arrived, and he could not risk unleashing hordes of incompetent hounds on his crime scene. They would only destroy whatever clues might remain. Better to wait for Vincent, who was more useful than any backup the Metropolitan Police Department had to offer.

He would not have long to wait. The afternoon was waning fast. The days were growing short, and darkness would drop swiftly from the sky like a hawk diving for its prey. He should be looking forward to dusk, to Vincent’s arrival. In spite of his miserable failure with the duke, he had tangible progress to report. He should be thrilled to have stumbled across such an important lead. It was providence itself, a life preserver in a heaving sea, thrown to his grasping arms in the final moments before drowning. But he could not find it in himself to be grateful for it. Instead he felt more alone than ever before.

“Why should I care, Kody?” he asked aloud. “What was she to me, or I to her?”

The man on the bed did not stir.

“I confided little in her, and she still less in me. I was just another patron in her salon.” Yet they had been kindred spirits, if not exactly friends, keen students of human nature who perceived the world around them with uncommon clarity. They saw the hidden gears and levers that powered the machine of society. Even more significantly, they understood each other, a rare and precious bond for two people who were not accustomed to being understood. Close or not, Zera had known Lenoir better than anyone else in the Five Villages. That she should be involved in the only crime he had cared about in a decade was a bitter twist of fate.

“How blind I have become. As bad as every other slob in the kennel, unable to follow his own logic to its necessary conclusion. Instead I sit in perfect ignorance until the perpetrator herself spells it out for me.” He shook his head in disgust. “Of course a man like Warrick has no connections in the Adali community. Even if the idea was his own, how could he have found someone willing to admit they practiced khekra? He would need a proxy, someone with connections in that world.”

Kody’s handsome features were stern, even in repose. His eyebrows sat heavily over his eyelids, and his mouth turned down slightly at the edges, giving it a disapproving cast.

“Yes,” said Lenoir quietly, “I am blind. Whatever the scenario—they came to him, or he to them—there is simply no way it plays out without a go-between. Someone the duke already knows, someone well placed in Kennian society. Who else could it have been?” Zera alone had a foot in both worlds; in this, she was certainly unique. If Lenoir had not been such a fool, he would have seen that.

In fact, the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that the whole enterprise was Zera’s doing. Lady Zera had long been in the business of giving people what they wanted. Lenoir had often admired her almost uncanny ability to home in on secret desires and find a way to satisfy them. She knew how to connect people, how to manipulate them, putting them together as easily as she would a child’s jigsaw puzzle. She knew how to make sure that powerful people were in her debt. Powerful people like the Duke of Warrick.

“Of course she would want the duke in her pocket. An Adal trying to make her way in the big city. So vulnerable. Always just one rumor away from disaster. The duke could free her from that forever.” Lenoir understood the cutthroat world of “polite society” too well to consider such designs trivial; he knew them for the matter of survival they truly were.

It was all so obvious, yet Lenoir had failed to see any of it until he was quite literally beaten over the head with it. Years of apathy and inaction had dulled his edge. He had already paid for his sins with his own life, though the debt had yet to be collected. He accepted that. What he could not accept was that Zach might be forced to pay the same toll.

Lenoir leaned over the bed. “Can you hear me?” If so, Kody made no sign. Even his eyeballs were perfectly still beneath the lids. It was just as well, really. If Kody knew how incompetent his supervisor had become, he might conclude that Lenoir was responsible for his state. And he would be right.

Shadows pooled along the floorboards like water in the hull of a slowly sinking ship. The corridor grew dark as weakening shafts of sunlight were slowly strangled by the shutters. Lenoir watched Kody in silence, the passage of time marked by the steady rise and fall of the sergeant’s chest.

Lenoir would have sworn that he felt it when Vincent arrived, for the touch of darkness raised the hairs on his arms.

The voice spoke behind him, smooth and cold as a pebble. “Did you find the corpse thieves?”

Lenoir did not turn around. “No. But I found something else.”

“I seek nothing else.”

Lenoir sighed. “I know what you seek, Vincent. And we are very close to finding it. Now that it is dark, I need your help.”

The spirit rounded the bed, coming to stand before Lenoir. His absinthe eyes glimmered eagerly in the growing dark. “Tell me.”

Lenoir grabbed his coat and stood. “We can talk on the way.”

The streetlamps cast softly glowing cones onto the flagstones of the high street. Vincent remained outside their reach, whether by choice or necessity, Lenoir could not tell. They stood before the sandstone facade of Lady Zera’s apartments. The windows were dark.

“She most likely left this place right after I did.” Lenoir had been reconciled to this fact from the moment he fled the scene, but it still caused his guts to twist over. If he had lost her, he had lost Zach.

“There are people inside,” said Vincent.

Lenoir exhaled slowly, savoring the taste of his relief. “How do you know?”

“I smell their blood.”

Lenoir shuddered. “You have many gifts, Vincent,” he said darkly as he started up the steps. The doors were locked, but that proved to be no obstacle. Vincent simply vanished, and a moment later, the latch opened and the door swung wide. Lenoir stepped into the gloom. The foyer seemed small and close, its familiar outlines suffused in shadow. All was silent. It occurred to him that whoever was in the apartments was almost certainly waiting for him, and they probably assumed he would return with reinforcements. “We should expect resistance,” he said, drawing his pistols from under his coat.

The spirit turned his uncanny gaze on Lenoir, and though his face remained expressionless, he somehow exuded an unmistakable air of disdain. He was not concerned about resistance.

Lenoir led the way to the second floor, moving cautiously. A stair creaked beneath his weight; he stopped, listening intently, but there was no movement. He continued on. The second floor spread out before him, illuminated only by the pale glow of streetlamps struggling through thick windows. Zera’s sumptuous furnishings were little more than misshapen lumps of shadow. Lenoir scanned the darkness, tracking his pistols from right to left. He took a step, and glass crunched beneath his boot—the remains of the ornament Zera had thrown at him. She had not bothered to tidy up. She was long gone, presumably. Whoever was still in this house had been left behind to deal with the hounds they assumed were coming. So much the better; it left him with someone to interrogate.

“Can you see in this blackness?” Lenoir whispered.

“Of course.”

“Is there anyone here?”

Vincent moved through the room, his boots silent against the plush carpet, his eerie gaze sweeping systematically over the dark shapes of furniture. Lenoir could not suppress a shiver as he watched the spirit prowl. It felt like a nightmare, as though he were concealed behind the sofa, huddled in terror, watching himself from outside his own body as the spirit hunted him. The feeling of being stalked was so visceral that when Vincent looked over and met his eye, Lenoir felt momentarily faint.

“There is blood on the carpet,” Vincent said quietly, “but it is long since dried. There is no one in this room.”

“There are three rooms on this floor,” Lenoir whispered back.

The spirit vanished. Lenoir moved away from the stairs, positioning himself so that his back was against the wall, his pistols trained on the stairway leading down from above. The weapons shimmied slightly, revealing the unsteadiness of his hands. He should have taken a glass of wine before he came. He licked his lips, waiting.

Vincent reappeared, his report consisting of a short shake of his head. Lenoir flicked the barrel of his pistol at the stairs and cocked his chin. Vincent understood; he went first. Lenoir followed a few steps behind, one pistol pointed over the rail to cover the first floor as they ascended. His mind told him that Vincent had searched the room thoroughly, but it was impossible to shake the instinct to protect his flank.

The crack of a rifle shattered the silence. Lenoir started so badly that he nearly lost his balance, and he dropped one of his pistols as he grabbed the rail to prevent himself from falling. Vincent was tossed against the wall with the force of the bullet. For a moment, everything was still. Then the spirit righted himself and continued up the stairs, moving with the same fluid grace as before. He turned left at the top stair and disappeared from Lenoir’s view.

A second rifle shot sounded, followed by the hissing pops of flintlock weapons. The handrail exploded into splinters, and a painting plunged from the wall. Lenoir crouched with his arms over his head, his thumb cocking the hammer of his own flintlock even though it was pointed uselessly at the ceiling.

There was a pause, silence. Lenoir glanced up, but all he could see was smoke. It drifted and curled at the top of the stairs, as languid as an opium cloud, lending a strange aura of serenity to the scene. Then someone shouted—a strangled, horrified cry—and the air hummed with the sound of a whip. The floor shuddered beneath something heavy—a body going down, Lenoir guessed. At least one set of footsteps pounded up the stairs above his head. Then more shouting, cursing, and inevitably, screaming. Lenoir sat frozen on the stairs, unable to move, unwilling to bear witness to the horror taking place a few feet away. His scars seemed to itch and squirm, and a cold sweat broke out on his brow. He could hear someone thrashing just above, boots thumping and scraping against the floor.

Vincent would wade through them easily, one by one, driven not by rage or bloodlust, but by whatever power animated his long-dead limbs, whispered in his long-dead ears. He would not stop until Lenoir was the only mortal alive in these apartments.

He will kill them all, and I will never find Zach. The thought came to him suddenly, with perfect clarity, and it was like oil applied to a rusted hinge. Lenoir’s knees unlocked. His head came up. His lungs drew air, slowly, unsteadily, until he was ready. He crested the stairs.

He was no longer worried about gunfire. Zera’s men had spent every barrel on Vincent, and there was no time to reload. Lenoir’s was the only pistol left in the equation, on this floor at least. He leveled it over what was left of the handrail and surveyed the scene.

Vincent was stooped over a body at the far end of the room, unwinding the coils of his scourge. He glanced only briefly at Lenoir, but he did not seem to be wounded. He had obviously been hit multiple times; his clothing was in tatters, his white skin glowing through the bullet holes like a galaxy of stars on a moonless night. Yet whatever injuries he had incurred were already gone. Lenoir recalled how quickly Vincent’s flesh had regenerated that day in the street, when the sunlight had melted the tissue from his bones. The screams of Zera’s men echoed anew in Lenoir’s mind, a sound of incomparable terror as they watched their bullets tear ineffectually through Vincent’s flesh. Had there been blood, he wondered? Driving the thought away, he surveyed the rest of the room.

Another body was draped over the back of a chair near the bay window, a pistol beneath each hand. It was too dark to be sure, but it looked as though the man had been shot, probably by one of his own. There was a third man lying prone near Vincent, partially concealed by a sofa. A rifle lay on the floor nearby. This had been the sharpshooter, the man who had taken the first shot. From the way Vincent’s body had moved, Lenoir guessed that the ball had taken him in the shoulder, but the spirit had seemed to feel no pain. Certainly he was not feeling any now, neither in his limbs nor in his soul, for he surveyed the scene with his usual dispassion, coiling his cursed whip around his arm.

“There are five more of them,” Vincent said. “They fled up the stairs.”

“We need to leave at least one of them alive,” Lenoir said sternly. “Do you think you can control yourself?”

Something like irritation flashed through the spirit’s eyes, and Lenoir wilted a little. “I cannot stay my hand against those who have defiled the dead. But I can delay their execution. You know this to be so; otherwise, you would not be standing here.”

Only a supreme effort prevented Lenoir from showing his dread in the face of this reminder of his impending execution. “Good,” he said as evenly as he was able, “because we need to question them regarding the whereabouts of their leaders.” This time, he did not bother to mention Zach, instead focusing on what Vincent wanted. He hoped it would be enough to persuade the spirit to exercise some restraint.

Lenoir fetched the flintlock he had dropped on the stairs, and they headed up to the third floor, Vincent leading as before. This time Lenoir anticipated the shots, dropping to a crouch as soon as they sounded. Even as they rang out, a heavy set of footsteps took the stairs to the fourth floor. Coward, Lenoir thought, even though he knew he would do the same. Where will he go, anyway? The only way out was in the opposite direction. Or was it? It occurred to Lenoir that the man might be able to escape onto the roof, and from there to a neighboring building. The town houses were built close enough together that even Lenoir would not have much trouble jumping between them, provided they were roughly the same height. The thought brought a lurch of panic, for Vincent might consider the man who fled to be the token survivor, the only one he intended to leave alive. If the survivor escaped, they would be right back where I started.

Lenoir waited until the last of the shots died away before charging up the remaining few steps. Smoke obscured his view, but he could hear what sounded like swords being drawn. There was movement in the haze, and someone lunged at him. Lenoir squeezed the trigger without thinking. His gun went off with a flash and a puff of smoke, and the man grunted, dropping his sword and clutching his chest. His momentum carried him into Lenoir even as his knees started to give way. Lenoir flung the dying man aside, leaving him to tumble down the stairs.

Cursing, Lenoir pointed the barrel of his weapon at the ceiling. The last thing he needed was to pick off targets of his own; Vincent did not require any assistance in that department. Yet if he stayed where he was, he would be forced to defend himself, and he was not skilled enough with a gun to be sure of merely wounding. Better to go after the coward, he decided. He spun around the rail and headed up, leaving Vincent to deal with the chaos below.

He paused on the landing, gazing up into the gloom. The stairs ended just ahead; this was the top floor. It was only now, as he planted his back against the wall, that it occurred to Lenoir that he might be walking into another ambush, or that some of the men below might follow him up. He could hear nothing over the shouts on the third floor, and could see little for the veil of smoke that continued to drift up the stairs. Vincent was occupied below. Lenoir was on his own.

You are dead anyway, he told himself firmly. You do this for Zach. Thus armored, he crept to the top of the stairs.

It was a bedroom, presumably Zera’s. It looked to be the only room on this floor, and had sloping walls that suggested an angled roof. That was well; it would make it more difficult for the coward to escape that way, especially if the adjoining buildings were of the same design. Lenoir glanced toward the windows, a pair of which divided the wall opposite him into three sections. Dark curtains concealed the view of the street, making it impossible to tell whether the windows were open or closed. There was no chill, but that proved little; the windows might only have been opened moments before. The stillness of the curtains was similarly unreliable, for the plush material obviously weighed a great deal. It was safest to assume that the coward remained in this room and had not yet escaped onto the roof.

The hearth lay dark against the far wall. A dressing table sat between the windows, with a massive bed opposite. The most likely place to conceal oneself, Lenoir concluded, was behind the bed. He leveled his pistols at what he judged to be chest height. Then he called out, “I will not hurt you.”

A flurry of movement and a telltale click alerted him to the impending shot, and he dropped to the floor. Splinters and dust showered him from the wall above. Instinctively, he squeezed off a shot of his own, but fortunately he missed by a wide margin. The coward ducked behind the bed again.

“This is unwise, my friend,” Lenoir called. “You have at most one shot left, assuming your weapon is double-barreled like mine. I have two. Even if you somehow manage to kill me, I have an ally, one who cannot be harmed by your pistol. But you know that already.”

He waited. There was no sound.

“Do you hear that? It is quiet below us. That can mean only thing: your friends are dead. You are the last one alive. I would very much like to keep you that way, but I have little control over the creature I came with.” A stifled sob sounded from the other side of the bed. Lenoir knew that terror only too well. He almost felt sorry for the man. But he kept his voice carefully devoid of pity as he said, “He will be here soon. If he sees that you are cooperating with me, he may stay his hand. Otherwise . . .” He let the word hang in the air, malignant and oppressive.

“Keep it away from me.” Spoken in little more than a whisper, the plea barely had enough strength to cross the room.

“I will do what I can.” It was the truth, and the most he could promise, but it still felt like a lie. “Put your weapon on the floor and kick it toward the windows where I can see it.”

For a moment, there was only silence. Then something heavy sounded against the floor, and a flintlock skittered out from behind the foot of the bed. It came to rest near the far window, spinning lazily over itself. It was a single-barreled weapon. Lenoir was sure he had seen only one gun. He prayed he was right.

“Now stand up slowly and keep your hands where I can see them.”

The man stood. His arms stuck out at his sides, as rigid as boards, and Lenoir could see that he was shaking. He wore a sword belt, but the scabbard was empty. Lenoir gestured with his pistol. “Where is your blade?”

“I—I don’t know,” the man stammered. “I don’t remember.” Lenoir might not have believed him, but at that moment a dark stain spread across the front of his trousers. In his fear, the poor wretch had wet himself.

“Who are you?” Lenoir asked, deciding to start off easy. He was young, perhaps twenty-five, with long blond hair and wiry limbs. Lenoir thought he looked familiar. “You work for Zera.”

The man’s gaze flicked briefly to his gun, as though he were reconsidering his surrender. Lenoir doubted he would go for it, but he kept his pistol trained on the man’s chest all the same. “Yes,” the man said finally.

“Where is she now? Is she with Los?”

The man’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly before he averted his gaze, staring down at his boots in a pathetic attempt not to give anything away.

“Where are they?” Lenoir demanded. The man continued to stare at his boots. Lenoir sighed. “We have been through this, my friend. It is in your best interests to answer my questions.” More silence.

“My turn,” said a familiar voice, and Vincent stepped out of the shadows.

The man shrieked and leapt for his gun. Lenoir dove for the cover of the stairwell. The gun went off. For a moment, everything was still. Then came a moan unlike anything Lenoir had ever heard, a sound of pure despair that froze his blood.

Lenoir straightened. The young man was on his knees, his head bowed in resignation. Vincent stood over him.

“Don’t kill him!”

The spirit turned, and Lenoir had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. There was a hole the size of a cherry just above Vincent’s right eye. It had already begun to close; in a few seconds, it would be gone. “I am not a fool, mortal,” the spirit said disdainfully, seemingly oblivious to the ghastly wound. “If I intended to kill him, he would already be dead.” Vincent turned back to the young man, who had begun to sob quietly. “What do you mean to do with him?”

“Ordinarily, I would hang him off the balcony by his ankles.” Actually, Lenoir had only done that once, and it had proven to be more trouble than it was worth. But it sounded good. “But since you are here, I don’t think we need to bother with that.”

He crossed the room and knelt in front of the young man. Grabbing a fistful of straw-colored hair, he jerked the man’s head back so that he was looking into Lenoir’s eyes. “I want to show you something.”

Releasing the man’s hair, he pulled back his sleeve to reveal the hideous scar on his forearm. He slapped the wretch’s forehead to make sure he was looking. “See this? Do you know what this is?” The man shook his head frantically. “No? Have you never seen a cadaver, my friend? This is dead flesh. Necrotic, it is called. The flesh of a corpse. Do you know how I got this?”

The man’s face crumpled, tears and mucus and saliva streaming forth as though someone were wringing out a wet cloth.

“I got it from this creature beside me, this spirit of vengeance. You saw what he has done to your friends.”

“Keep it away from me,” the man pleaded again, his eyes screwed shut.

“Tell me where they are.”

“They told us not to get involved with her. They said this would happen!”

“Who?”

“The others. My cousin and me, we needed the money. But the others she tried to hire, they said no. They said it was bad business.”

“You should have listened,” Lenoir said gravely. “Now tell me what I want to know.”

“Spare my life! Spare me, and I’ll tell you anything!”

It would have been so easy to lie. Lenoir had done it thousands of times before, with little enough justification. Surely even God Himself could not blame Lenoir for lying now. Yet he could not bring himself to do it. Instead he looked up at Vincent and said, “The arm.”

He moved aside as Vincent unhooked the whip from his belt. The man scrambled to his feet and tried to flee. Lenoir did not even bother trying to stop him. The scourge caught his arm as he ran past, and the scream it tore from his throat forced Lenoir to shut his eyes.

Lenoir counted to five. It might have been longer, for he could barely concentrate over the screaming. Panic thrummed in his nerves, and he struggled against an almost overwhelming urge to flee. His instincts surged against his willpower like a raging river threatening to breach a dam, but he held his ground.

“Stop.”

He forced himself to open his eyes. To his relief, Vincent obeyed immediately, giving his wrist an expert twist to dislodge the scourge. The young man lay on the floor, limp and shuddering. The flesh on his arm was black. Blood oozed from the puncture wounds, dark and strangely thick. The man’s eyes rolled back slightly, and for a moment Lenoir feared he would pass out. Instead he lurched suddenly and vomited.

“I know how you feel,” said Lenoir, but in spite of the words, there was no sympathy in his voice. “It is a curious sensation, is it not? The body scarcely knows how to process it, the mind still less. The barbs are like the fangs of a venomous snake, only instead of pouring poison into your veins, they suck the life force from you. Or so I imagine—who knows what effect that cursed weapon truly has? It is better, I think, to have the whip around one’s neck. That way, you die before you are forced to feel your flesh rotting, before you are forced to smell your own blood congealing. I for one do not wish to savor my death. When it comes, I want it to overwhelm me, not sneak up on me like some miserable thief.” He found himself staring at Vincent as he spoke these words. As usual, the spirit merely returned his gaze impassively.

He returned his attention to the young man at his feet. “What about you, friend? How do you want to die?”

The man looked up at Lenoir with haunted eyes. “I want to die old, in my bed.”

“Alas, that seems unlikely. But at least you can die with a clean soul.” He paused, feeling Vincent’s gaze on him.

“A clean soul,” the spirit echoed, his voice cool and biting like a winter wind. His uncanny eyes seemed to flare momentarily.

“Tell me where Los is,” Lenoir repeated, gently this time.

He could always tell when a man was broken. Sometimes it was the posture—a bowed spine, or slumped shoulders. Sometimes it was the voice, weighed down by resignation and despair. Mostly, though, it was the eyes that gave it away, and this time was no exception. The young man looked up at him dully, all traces of defiance wiped away. All that was left was a flat surface in which Lenoir saw nothing but his own reflection.

“He’s in the cathedral,” the man said. “The abandoned cathedral at the far end of town.”

Relief crashed over Lenoir in a dizzying wave. “And the boy—is he there as well?”

“For now, but he’ll be gone by tomorrow, one way or another.”

Lenoir frowned. “What do you mean, one way or another?”

“Lady Zera said tonight is the night. If they get it right, the boy won’t be himself anymore. If they get it wrong . . .” He did not finish, but he did not have to. Lenoir was already heading for the stairs.

“Do you know where the cathedral is?” Vincent called after him.

“I do.”

“What do you want me to do with this one?”

Lenoir paused on the stairs. “Do you have a choice, Vincent?” He spoke in a voice so low it was all but inaudible, even to him. Somehow he knew the spirit could hear him.

“No.”

“Then do not ask me.”

Lenoir hurried down the stairs and out into the night. He did not wait for Vincent. He knew there was no need.