Blood & Rust Read online

  I kissed him, tasting the blood. I felt his heat, and I wanted it. Needed it. The blood that had drawn me here lit a dark fire in my belly. Even as eye contact was broken, and Tony began to move again, I didn’t let go.

  He bucked and struggled, but from somewhere I found the strength to lift him off the ground. He screamed, but it was muffled by my own mouth. His breath forced life into my own lungs. The fire inside him flared into a nova.

  His head whipped from side to side. I felt flesh tear. Warmth spread across me, inside me. As he thrashed, I bit into the heat, drank it in, absorbed it.

  Then my delirium snapped, the fever broke, and I became aware that I was holding a corpse. I dropped Tony, now only so much dead weight, and I could think clearly again.

  What I thought was, I’m a fucking nut. I’m a homicidal maniac. I just killed a man.

  I backed away from the scene, until I felt my back pushing the front door completely closed. The room in front of me was dark, but my eyes had adjusted well enough to see both crumpled bodies. Only one breathed.

  I tensed myself, and walked back into the living room, stepping over Tony’s body. I checked the woman. Even in the dark I could see that she’d been severely beaten. Even as my mind tried to use her to justify what I did, I felt the same perverse lust when I smelled her blood.

  As when I smelled Sam’s blood.

  I knew that in the state I’d been in, if she’d been the only one in this apartment, she would’ve been the corpse. Tony had died not for any moral decision on my part, but because he had attracted my attention.

  What was happening to me?

  I stood by the woman and, thankfully, felt myself in control despite the feelings her blood kindled in me.

  At first I thought she was out cold, but when I touched her, she winced and curled up tighter into a fetal position. She was sobbing, but so low that I could barely hear her.

  “It’s all right,” I told her lamely. “It’s over.”

  As I whispered meaningless reassurances, I wondered how much she’d seen. By all rights she should’ve been running away from me, screaming for the police. Right now I didn’t much care. I had a totally selfish desire to get her away from Tony’s corpse.

  It took a little encouragement to get her to stand up; fortunately, she didn’t stand up facing the door, or Tony. “That’s it,” I said. “We’ve got to get you into bed.”

  She shivered against my arm, which was around her shoulders, supporting her. “I didn’t,” she whispered. “I don’t do things like that.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.” I maneuvered her down the hall toward what I hoped was the bedroom.

  “Where’s Tony? I have to tell him—”

  “Tony left,” I said a little abruptly.

  She half-turned toward me, as if suddenly realizing I was there. “Who are you?” A note of panic slipped into her voice.

  “A friend,” I said. I tried to put all the reassurance I could in the word, and it made me feel like a fraud.

  She stared at me through a right eye that was swelling shut. The emotion leached out of her voice as she said, “It isn’t his fault.”

  I turned away and kept her moving toward the bedroom. “He loves me,” she said.

  I felt sick.

  When I laid her out on her bed, she looked up at me and asked, “What’s your name?”

  Something inside made me say, “Raven.”

  She smiled, weakly, and I told her to go to sleep. She did as I told her.

  By the time I had gotten her—I still didn’t know her name, and I didn’t really want to—to bed, I was pretty sure that no one in the building had noticed our little disturbance. With what I had broken in on, if anyone had noticed, they’d ignored it.

  Flash of a memory, more an amalgam of images and impressions than any single scene from my past. Women all of them, I had met dozens of them, but they all felt like the same woman. Most were clients who wanted help rescuing a child from an abusive runaway spouse. On a few more agonizing occasions, the women were the ones who illegally swiped the kids....

  Sometimes the law is a poor parent.

  Every time it’s the same question. The neighbors hear the yelling, the fights, the beatings—Why don’t they ever do anything?

  I rubbed my temples. A corpse was a high price for a piece of my past.

  But, thanks to the stoic ignorance of the residents here, there were no police, no ambulances, no one even knocking on the broken door to ask what was wrong.

  I turned on a still-intact table lamp, to get a good look at Tony. He had collapsed facedown, and I prodded a shoulder with a boot to flip him over.

  I took a step back, and almost fell over.

  The lower quarter of Tony’s face was gone, flesh ripped down to the bone. Torn flesh ran down the right side of his neck to the collarbone. The bite-marks did not come from human teeth.

  I raised my hand to my face, and it came away bloody.

  I looked down at myself, and Tony’s blood covered me, coating the front of my shirt. Tony looked as if he’d bathed in it. I wanted to feel sick, but the sight failed to raise a single twinge of nausea.

  I knelt by Tony’s head and examined the bites.

  I knew I had been the one who savaged Tony’s face, I remembered doing it, but there was no way my teeth could have produced the wounds I saw. I traced a line above the worst of it, drawing my finger across the intact skin over Tony’s cheekbone. It left a small trail of blood, and the skin beneath turned an even paler white with compression. The color refused to return—

  A realization came to me.

  I ran to the bathroom, my eyes lowered until I had my hand up to shade my reflection’s eyes.

  Under the smears of blood, my face looked perfectly normal. There was none of the pallor that I had seen earlier, none of the paleness, none of the desiccation. My body filled out the clothes I wore. The weakness, the disorientation, all the symptoms that had me in a near-panic, they were all gone.

  I was more convinced than ever that I had lost my senses. The physical transformation I had seen in myself was flatly impossible, and the only explanation I had was that I’d been in a state of homicidal derangement ever since I had left the bathroom downstairs.

  That’s a lie. There’s at least one other explanation.

  I tried to push the thought away.

  Lust for blood, an aversion to mirrors....

  It was insane.

  Someone placed a Eucharist upon my doorway—

  It wasn’t as if I’d reacted to it.

  That sacrifice, the blood—

  “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it,” I whispered. My mind didn’t stop gnawing on the possibility—the impossibility—but I tried to ignore it as I did what I could to clean the blood off myself.

  Fortunately, the mess had confined itself to my shirt-front. The shirt was a total loss, but the rest of my clothes had gotten by with only a few minor spatters. My shoes, face, and hands, I washed off. I was hampered by my reflection and my lack of sunglasses, but it was surprising how easily I became used to not looking myself in the eye.

  I left the bathroom, and the bedroom door was still closed.

  Tony was where I had left him.

  I sat, shirtless, on the edge of an askew couch, and considered my options. I had until the woman woke up to do something. The best course—for humanity, if not myself—seemed to be to sit around and wait for the cops, since I appeared to be a psychopath.

  For some reason, that option didn’t appeal to me. Neither did just leaving Tony the corpse here. Not only did that woman, whoever she was, have enough to deal with, but if I was serious about avoiding the police, Tony was one hell of a calling card.

  So how to dispose of the body? That was the question.

  Packing Tony for storage was easier than I expected. It was helped by the fact that, while the corpse was covered by blood, there was none of the spraying I’d have expected from someone missing half his neck—

  You
know what happened to most of the blood.

  —The blood was pretty much confined to Tony and the carpet beneath him. Another lucky break was the fact that the carpet in the entryway was a loose Oriental-style rug resting on the wall-to-wall, and the blood hadn’t yet soaked through.

  I managed to find duct tape in the kitchen, and rolled Tony and my bloody shirt up in the carpet. It wasn’t perfect—his legs stuck out below the knees—but it managed to get most of the evidence in a single package.

  I found a garbage bag and stuck that over Tony’s dangling feet.

  Then I went through the apartment collecting his spoor. It was her apartment, so finding Tony’s possessions wasn’t too difficult. In a few minutes I’d found his shirt, boots, wallet, keys, and a handful of cheap male jewelry. Most of it was in the bedroom, but the woman slept so deeply that most of my caution in collecting the remains of Tony’s life was unwarranted.

  Tony’s car keys were important. I’d been hoping—praying—for the keys. I couldn’t exactly call a cab to pick up me and the corpse.

  The last thing I retrieved was my gun. Picking it up brought home the complete insanity of what had happened. I had dropped the gun to bite the bastard.

  What I could make no sense of was that he had let me. If he had had any sense at all, he should’ve dived for the gun the second I’d dropped it. But he had stayed there, fixated on me—

  Just like Bowie....

  I was avoiding that line of reasoning, so I looked out the kitchen window, searching for Tony’s car.

  8

  It wasn’t easy moving Tony by myself. It didn’t matter how strong I was, or how strong I thought I was. Carrying a corpse was different than carrying any other two-hundred-pound object. It wasn’t just dead weight I was dealing with, but it was loose, jointed, dead weight that insisted on bending and sagging toward the ground. Picking Tony up was like trying to swing a two-hundred-pound sack of wet cement over my shoulder.

  I felt incredibly exposed as I descended the fire escape. Even though, by my watch, it was after two in the morning. Even though the snowstorm was still whiting-out everything beyond a hundred feet. Even though I couldn’t see another soul. I felt as if I were being watched during every step I took.

  It was a harrowing descent. The metal fire-escape had accumulated a layer of snow over a coating of ice. Each step was uncertain and felt as if my foot would slide out from under me. Tony didn’t help. Every time a gust rattled through the metal around me, Tony would catch the wind and try to pull me off my feet. Ice motes buffeted my face, but I barely felt them.

  In the lot behind the building, everything was blue-tinted monochrome, black, blue-grays, and whites. The cars were hard to discern. A half a dozen sat back here, and all I had to go on were Tony’s keys, which went to a Chrysler. Instinct led me to the large, unaerodynamic pile of snow that had no hubcaps.

  With one hand, I wiped snow away from the rear of my chosen car, and saw it was a Plymouth Duster. In a final test I fumbled out Tony’s keys from my pocket, trying not to let him tumble into the snow.

  I shoved the key into the ice-coated lock on the trunk. It slid in, but wouldn’t turn. In frustration, I forced it. The key turned and the trunk popped open.

  It was Tony’s Plymouth.

  With a sense of relief, I let Tony’s corpse roll off my shoulder and into the trunk. The car was an old model, ’76 at the latest, and the cavernous trunk swallowed all of him without complaint. I slammed the trunk shut, thankful that no one had seen me.

  My thanks came too soon.

  “Sir, you show some instincts that will stand you in good stead.”

  I whipped away from the trunk, to look for the speaker. I heard him before I saw him. It may have been because of the clothes he wore. It was a few seconds before I saw a white-suited figure emerging from the blowing snow. It was disorienting to watch. I faced the rear of the apartment, and I could see it barely as a shadow within the blue-gray wall of wind-whipped snow.

  The speaker appeared between me and the apartment, as if he were emerging from an invisible distance, as if the apartment building had never been there.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “My chosen name is Gabriel.” He spoke with a thick Southern accent. He was past middle age; he looked to me to be in his late sixties or early seventies. His hair was white, and blew around his shoulders. He wore a white suit that was more fit for the Bahamas than Cleveland. He walked with a long cane whose shaft was silvered. He had large hands, the hands of a pianist. They completely enveloped the head of the cane when he leaned upon it.

  For a long time I stared at him. Then I asked, “What are you doing here?”

  Gabriel smiled. “Ah, it has been a long time since any youth had the temerity to question my right to be anywhere. It is my question you ask, sir. One I would be addressing to you—” He motioned to the trunk with his cane. “—if I had not already known your business.”

  I began to look for a likely escape route. Unfortunately, all of them—the building, the driveway, and the alley opposite the driveway—led past Gabriel. He didn’t look threatening, but there was something about his bearing that made me loath to test him. “So you’ve called the police already?”

  Gabriel laughed. “If you were not so obviously ignorant, I should take that question as an aspersion on my honor. I keep my Covenants, sir. Even with those who know no Covenant.”

  I shook my head; none of this was making any sense to me. “What are you doing here?” I repeated. “What are you talking about? What’s going on here?”

  Gabriel frowned slightly. “Learn some respect for your elders, Mr. Tyler—”

  “You know me?”

  He pointed his cane at me. “Keep your peace for a moment and perhaps your questions might be answered. Now, may I speak without interruption?”

  I nodded.

  “I knew of a man, a man named Kane Tyler. This man was a hunter of children. In time he was hunting one of the Covenant, the one known as Childe. It has come to be that those of the Covenant hunt Childe as well.”

  He paused for a time and I nodded, still not understanding all of what he was saying. “So you’re looking for Childe, too?” After a beat, I added, “Sir?” There was something about him that did command respect.

  Gabriel smiled. “Childe has allowed his blood to disregard the Covenant, and for that he must be found and disciplined.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What’s this Covenant that you talk about?”

  Gabriel looked at me for a long time. “Who is your master that would send you into the world without that knowledge at least? Is it Childe that spawned you?”

  I stared at him.

  “You are ignorant, sir.” Gabriel took one step, and suddenly he had closed the distance between us. One of those pianist’s hands gripped my chin, cradling my face. He held his face within an inch of my own, staring into my eyes. “Do not feign ignorance that you do not possess. I am lord of my blood, and you may not deny who it is that owns you.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

  Gabriel grimaced, and I saw anger burn there. It was an anger that never left the eyes, but it was a fury that made Tony’s bonfire rage nothing more than a birthday candle.

  My feet lifted off the ground before I realized what was happening. “Witless thrall!” Gabriel said as he flung me toward the apartment. I was in the air nearly a full second before my back slammed into the railing of the fire escape. My head snapped back with an impact that felt as if it broke my neck. I tumbled forward, and fell six feet to land face first in the snow. The impact had stunned me so much that I couldn’t raise my arms to protect myself. My face slammed into the snow-covered asphalt.

  I lay there for a long time, feeling warmth trickle down my cheek.

  “Get up.” I felt a boot push my shoulder, turning me over.

  After that impact, I shouldn’t have been able to move, much less get to my feet. To my own
surprise, I found myself standing. I stood, shaking, as the wind froze the blood on my face.

  Gabriel held his cane in both hands, horizontal at belt height. I could finally see the head of the cane, the head of a serpent or dragon worked in pewter. Set in the serpent’s eye was a red stone, a ruby at odds with the blue-gray world around me.

  “You have exhausted what license youth and ignorance grant you. I am not here to answer your questions, and you have no leave to challenge me. The only respect due you is the respect due your master.” He twisted the head of his cane and slowly withdrew a blade from it. “You will tell me who your master is, and your chosen name. If you do not, your master shall find his thrall less than worthy.”

  I took a step back, toward the building. I reached for my gun, but the holster was empty.

  Gabriel shook his head. “You disappoint me. Perhaps I was wrong about your instincts.” He kept walking toward me. “Many as young as you would have abandoned the body after such a feeding. I must deal with such violations too often.” He raised the blade of his cane to my neck. It felt even colder than the wind. It was sharp enough that I could feel skin part under the pressure. I feared that he would open my jugular.

  “Answer me. Do not force me to mark you.”

  I gasped. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what you’re asking. My name is Kane Tyler, and if I have a master, I don’t know about it.”

  “If you lie ...” Gabriel stared at my face, and then at where the blade met my throat. He removed the sword and held it up so that a bead of my blood rolled down its edge. My own blood looked black in the dark, nothing like Tony’s.

  Gabriel turned the blade, examining the blood. His nostrils flared and he touched the edge briefly to his lips.

  He stood there immobile for a moment, looking at me. Then he took a handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiped his mouth and the blade, and replaced the blade within the cane.

  He then shocked me by making a low bow. “Sir, it seems the humble servant before you has done you a wrong.”

  “What ... ?” The question refused to form itself.