Текст книги "Hold The Dark"

Автор книги: Frank Tuttle

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

Chapter Thirteen

Innigot himself turned to face me. I knew the man, and he knew me, just another occasional Curfew-breaker out for a brew.

That’s what he thought, at first. But the longer he looked, the more troubled his grizzled old face became.

I grinned. He blanched and toddled off toward the back. I swept my gaze across the taproom, in search of my Thin Man.

As was any curfew-breaking alehouse, Innigot’s was dark. There were three candles guttering along the bar, flickering just bright enough to show drunks the way to more beer without making it obvious the place was open in flagrant defiance of the Curfew. Half a dozen hunched forms nursed beers at four tables. All watched me, without turning their faces toward me.

Save one. I blinked, the huldra shook and then the candle-lit room was as bright as noon. I saw him plain, though he sat in the back, in a corner barely touched by the light.

I smiled. As one, the other five men in the room rose, wove and heeled-and-toed it for the door. They left hats. They left coats. They left it all, and I let them go.

The Thin Man saw. He watched me come for him, tried to meet my eyes, tried to convince himself he wasn’t afraid, that something hadn’t gone horribly wrong. I could see though, see the fear rising through him, as easily as I saw the silver buckles on his fancy shoes, or the swan-shaped silver clasp that held his cloak closed at his throat.

The huldra stirred again in my hand. And as I walked, it showed me things.

You know those skull-face carvings at the right-hand gatepost of Orthodox cemeteries? Looks like a skull-until you see the skull is merely folds in the robe of the Angel Aaran, and part of his outstretched hands.

That’s what it was like, as I walked. I saw stains on the warped planks of Innigot’s floor, and an instant later I saw that they were old blood, blood spilled while three men had held a fourth down and cut him. Blood spilled while Innigot had stood calmly ten feet away, wiping down his dirty glasses with a filthy rag.

I heard shouts in the wind, cries for mercy-sounds that had been there all along, for anyone who knew how to listen.

And so when I looked down upon the Thin Man, I saw his fear, plain as a bucket of sun. He looked up at me with cold brown eyes and a face that betrayed neither guilt nor shame. But he saw something in me, something in my eyes, something that chilled him to the bone.

I laughed. “Well, well.” I stopped, pulled a chair around, sat beside him at his wobbly table. “Come to talk about combs, have we?”

He nodded, licked his lips and swallowed. “I brought all the rest. I have the other seven, right here.”

He reached beneath his chair, reached for a paper bag. I didn’t follow his hand with my eyes, didn’t need to see. I knew the bag was full of silver combs, just as he’d said. Each was a sibling to Martha’s.

I snatched his hand back, put it down flat on the table, withdrew my own hand.

“I don’t want them.”

“I’ll tell you where they came from.”

The huldra showed me words near his lips.

“You got them from a young man named Tenny Hanks. He stole them from his father, who runs an import shop on Vanth. Tenny was a weedhead. You gave him ten crowns, and he smoked that right up and killed himself the next day trying to rob an ogre.” I smiled in triumph. “Isn’t that right?”

He opened his mouth, shut it, tried to decide if he could knock me down and make for the door.

I let him see my eyes. He began to shake.

“I never wanted the combs. All that was a lie. Just like you feared. No, it’s the girls I want to talk about. You know the girls. The special ones. The ones you fed to your vampire friends.”

He choked back a shout, tried to bolt. I shoved him back, surprised at how easily he gave way to my touch.

“I know it all,” I said. He tried to look away, but I held his gaze, let the huldra show me more. “I know about the priest. I know about the halfdead. I know you help them, because they let you watch.” I pulled him closer, laughed when he wriggled and whimpered. “You made a mistake, taking Martha Hoobin. She was no whore, and you knew it. What would your halfdead friends say, if they knew you meant to feed them a rich man’s sister?”

He gobbled and clawed. I tightened my grip.

“They’d have your head, they would. Poor stubborn Miss Hoobin. She preferred her Balptist verse to the mouthings of your Church, and you decided you’d make her pay. What better way to educate her in the mercies of your Church than to feed her to a room of halfdead, you miserable little swine. Isn’t that right?”

“I’ll tell you,” he said, gasping around my grasp. I had him by the throat, one-handed. He grappled and clawed but couldn’t dislodge my grip. “I’ll tell you where they are. Tell you where the halfdead are.”

I laughed. The sound of it was strange, more thunder than voice.

“Oh, you shall indeed. Do you think that will save you?”

“You want to know, don’t you?”

I laughed again.

“I know already.” The huldra whispered again, telling me what was ready to leap from the Thin Man’s panicked lips.

“Below another old warehouse. On Santos. Three blocks from here. They’ve gathered there, already. The party begins in an hour. Have I missed anything?”

He coughed and wheezed, began to turn purple. “You…swore. You…swore…you wouldn’t…harm.”

“Did I now?”

I let go. He fell limp down on the table, threw up, lifted his face, sputtering and spewing.

I saw, without turning, the door open behind me. I saw Ethel Hoobin march inside, and his brothers, and then dozens more. All bore weapons. Ethel and his brothers bore short lengths of chain, each bearing a fresh-sharpened hook at the end.

“Mustn’t break a promise,” I whispered to him. “I shall do you no harm.” I backed away. Let him see the New People, let him read the murder written plain on their hard wet faces.

“Pity that these gentlemen are parties to no such oath. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘pound of flesh’? It’s a quaint country saying. Comes from those chains, and those hooks. I’m sure you can imagine the rest. And if not, well, you’ll see, soon enough.”

I turned from him. Ethel Hoobin met my gaze, though many would not.

“Has he my Martha?”

“He has. He took her.”

Behind me, the Thin Man let out a ruckus. Men rushed forward and blows sounded. He yelped and went quiet.

“Do you know where?”

I told Ethel where. I told him to finish his business. I would wait outside, and we would go and get Martha.

He nodded, and the way parted. As the Thin Man began to sob and beg, I left Innigot’s.

It was still raining outside. The huldra showed me a hidden thing, and I brushed the rain away and set out for Santos Street, through a night made as bright as day.

The huldra whispered. I listened. I knew I would have no need of Evis and his friends, or Ethel and his. The blood I meant to spill lay ahead, and I could not be troubled to wait.

So I walked. Each step took me farther, each breath made me stronger, each whisper of the huldra left me taller, let me see more than I’d seen an instant before. I heard music in the storm, heard voices in the wind, saw wonders and terrors in each flicker of far-off lightning.

Soon, I realized I was no longer looking at walls and doors, but looking down on rooftops and rain-swept streets. I towered above it all, my every step that of a giant, my footfalls the very thunder. I laughed, and the skies split with a terrible bright light. I saw hidden forms twist and dance in the shadows.

Below and behind me, shapes scurried, darting from here to there. Some were dark and swift and seemed at times to fly, while some were slow and steady-Evis, I recalled, as if from an old and distant memory. Avalante. Evis and his soldiers, and the New People keeping carefully apart from each other, antlike in my wake.

I realized I could reach down and crush them, stamp them out like insects. The huldra knew, would show me how. Strange memories rose and fell, of doing just such a thing many times before. Other images followed-faces in the dark, a tower on a hill, fire raining from a wounded crimson sky.

“No,” I said, my voice booming. “It is true I spoke my name. Even so, I shall have no other.”

I wasn’t sure why I said those words. But the huldra knew. It turned me back toward the warehouse on Santos, and soon I could see down upon it, even see the cold dark figures huddled unknowing within.

The huldra knew my wishes. I shrank, until I faced a door. I let loose my hold upon the rain, let it beat down over me, let it sting my face and my mouth with its acrid taste of bitter ashes.

I put forth my hand. Knock twice fast, twice slow, twice fast again, whispered the huldra.

I obeyed. In a moment, I heard the creak of a bar being lifted, and when I tried the door again it opened.

I stepped inside, let the rain and the dark and the huldra blur my form into a simulacra of the Thin Man’s.

I stood in a dark foyer. Wood floor. Wood walls. Ten by ten, maybe, with a single second door set in the wall facing the one through which I’d entered. No candles burned, but I saw.

Saw a halfdead before me. He wore no House insignia, but the huldra told me a name. Mercross, oldest and worst of all the dark Houses.

I didn’t care. Because I saw something else, there in the dark. Faint, but unmistakable, and utterly and forever unforgivable.

He bore the mark of blood, rich and red about his hands, about his mouth. He’d washed, but I could see. Darla’s blood, perhaps. My Darla’s blood.

I made a sound, something between a shout and a growl.

An instant of confusion, when he saw I wasn’t the same man he’d admitted. Another instant to raise his pale hands toward me, to open his mouth, to leap.

An instant too long. That which had blossomed in my soul, back in the alley on Regent Street, took root, fed by rage and fury, fed by the blood lingering on his lips.

I caught him up. Caught him and stilled his cries and let him flop like a fresh-caught trout in my hands. I let him see my eyes. Let him see his fate, mirrored within.

“You die for what you did. You die for her.”

I pulled him apart. Easily. I pulled, twisted and tore and did not stop until he was a twitching red ruin. I smeared what was left upon the walls.

When I was done, I took hold of the far door and pulled it from its hinges.

“Come and be judged,” I said, and my voice rang out like an Angel’s. “Come and face the hand of wrath!”

Shapes flew. Harsh voices cried out.

I squeezed myself through the tiny door, and my Darla had her vengeance at last.

Some time later, I became aware.

Aware of voices, furtive footfalls and the glare of torches and lanterns.

The sounds rang hollow, in a large and empty room. I blinked, and the dark fled, and I saw.

It had been a warehouse. Tall bare walls, high flat ceiling, warped plank floor. Windows all boarded, doors all barred, though attempts had been made to pull down the bars from within.

Few such attempts had succeeded.

Carnage lay about me. Blood-thin and black-covered nearly every surface. The odd arm or leg completed the grim decor.

I coughed, tasted blood and wiped my face.

My hand came away red.

I scrambled to my feet. Torchlight flowed through a broken door, and a man stepped through, saw me, shouted and stepped quickly back.

The man darted back through, half a dozen of his fellows and a pair of halfdead on his heels. The halfdead trained crossbows upon me, would have fired had not another pale form appeared and shouted them down.

I spat, and the spittle was red. My head spun, and my vision was alternately clear or shadowed. My ears rang, and when I moved I felt as if my limbs were the wrong size, the wrong shape.

A voice called out, half familiar.

“Finder?”

I knew a finder, once, it seemed. What had been his name?

“Mister Markhat?”

I took a breath, nodded.

“Are you injured?”

Evis stepped forward, waved his men to follow. The New People came as well.

The crossbow-bolts shone strange, in the flickers between light and dark.

I tried to speak, failed. Tried to recall how I’d come to be in the midst of such horror-

– and it all came flooding back to me, and my hand closed around the huldra, and my eyes were suddenly accustomed to the dark once again.

Evis and his men came ahead, their eyes darting to and fro, from limb to bloodstain and back to me.

“I see you found the nest,” said Evis, carefully.

“I found those I sought. They shall trouble us no more.”

Evis nodded, halted. “No, it seems they shall not.” He turned, spoke to his fellows, and one went darting off.

“Miss Hoobin,” he said. “Have you perhaps seen her?”

“I did not yet seek her out.” I cast my new senses down, turned them to the floor, and what might lie beneath.

“She awaits us below. She is not alone. I shall tend to them, as well.”

“No,” said Evis, and I turned sharp upon him. “Please. Let us. Would you deny the brothers Hoobin their due, now that you have had yours?”

“I will do as I wish.” My voice took on hints of thunder. “None shall deter me.”

“None will seek to deter you,” said Evis. “But might we beg of you this boon?”

Ethel and his brothers came rushing inside, along with a gang of twenty or so winded New People. Many bore cuts and bruises. I gathered the only fighting hadn’t been within the bloody walls I faced.

I laughed. “Come. I shall watch then. It will amuse me.”

I caught hold of the trap door recently cut into the floor. Caught hold of it from where I stood, and blasted it from its hidden frame, all without moving.

Evis nodded, snapped instructions to his men and motioned for Ethel and his to follow.

They swarmed off, into the deeper dark. I followed, my pace leisurely, no longer troubled by the blood that ran down my face.

It was nearly over by the time I descended the makeshift stair. Two halfdead and a trio of humans. The halfdead fell first, shot by Evis’s faintly glowing crossbow bolts-I could see plain the spell caught in the bolts, a simple thing of light and heat-and a fusillade of blows from a furious New People mob.

Evis gathered the humans in a corner. Ethel stepped forward, blade raised, and asked them where his sister was.

I knew. I made my way easily through the dark, came to a heavy door, opened it.

A raving, bloodied halfdead flew shrieking to meet me. I caught it, too, and would have crushed it, save it began to cry, a woman’s high sobs.

I brought it out, into the sudden ring of light cast by Ethel’s torch.

Ethel bellowed, would have hacked the captive priests apart had I not silenced him with a shout.

“This is not your sister.”

“Ameel Cant,” said Evis, elbowing his way through the crowd. He eyed her critically, pointed toward a small room behind the one I’d just opened. “If you please?”

I cast her into it and slammed the door. She beat and flailed upon it, her cries long and high and anguished.

A bar leaned by the door. I picked it up, dropped it in the holds, crossed the room, flung open the next door and stepped inside.

And there she was.

Martha Hoobin, backed into the furthest corner of the tiny stinking room, glaring up at me with those sky-blue Hoobin eyes.

“You’ll nare lay a hand on me, ye cat-eyed devil.” She’d torn a post from the bed that was the room’s sole piece of furniture and scraped one end sharp. She held the point steady and level with my gut.

Even there, in the dark, through eyes no longer entirely my own, I could see a bit of Ethel in the set of Martha’s jaw, in the way she held her eyes boring straight into mine. There were other similarities-the long narrow shape of the nose, the coal-black hair, the cheekbones that caught the faint light of approaching torches behind-but while Martha was obviously a Hoobin, she’d inherited none of her brothers’ massive big-boned frames. She was tiny-perhaps half Ethel’s height, maybe half a hand taller than Mama-almost Elfishly so, in the seeming fragility of her limbs, in the long fingers, in the nearly luminous blue of her eyes.

I didn’t need the huldra to show me any semblance of fragility was mere illusion. She gripped her makeshift spear tight. Her breathing was steady. I could see her measuring the distance between me and the door and wondering if she could dart through it after making a stab at my ribs.

She even had the money. Darla’s fortune, eleven hundred crowns in paper, still stuffed down the front of her ripped, soiled blouse. I knew they tried to take the money, tried to take her clothes-tried, and failed.

“I tell ye I’ll gut ye, ye blood-drinkin’ get of a troll,” she said.

“Pleased to meet you too,” I said. And then Ethel Hoobin sidled past me.

“Martha!”

“Ethel?”

The rest of the Hoobins stormed in, and they all began to shout. A ragged cheer went up from the New People gathered outside.

Ethel turned toward me, tears in his eyes.

“You have done what you said,” he said. “You have saved our sister.”

He saw the huldra. I know he did. Mama said later my eyes were glowing, red as coals and flickering like wind-blown embers. But Ethel Hoobin put out his hand, in a fist, and touched me on the chest, right above my heart.

“Thank you.”

Martha looked up at me, nodded and looked away.

But even as Ethel led her out of the room, led her past me, Martha Hoobin kept her eyes on my hands, and her pitiful bed-post spear aimed square at my gut.

The New People swept out, reached the stair, swept up it. Evis and his crew remained, though I noted they had doubled or tripled in number since I had gone into Martha’s room.

A new voice rang out. “Boy!” it said, and I turned to see Mama clambering down the stair, the Hoogas bloodied and stiff haired on her heels. Mama carried an enormous meat-cleaver, hairs and bits of bone still clinging to the blade. The Hoogas bore traditional Ogre clubs-five-foot timbers, the striking ends festooned with nail-spikes and broken glass and the broken ends of bones. Both bore the signs of enthusiastic, recent use.

“Boy!” shouted Mama, dropping to the floor with a ragged puff of breath. “Boy, I told you not to touch that thing!”

I turned away. Evis saw, left the captive human priests and joined me outside the door at which dead Ameel Cant still beat.

“It is done,” said Evis, when he was near enough to speak. “Martha Hoobin is going home.”

The priests cried out, and were quickly and permanently silenced. Evis shook his head. “It is done,” he said, again.

“You’ll let them go?” I said, nodding at the retreating New People. “What makes you think they will not rise up against you tomorrow?”

Evis shrugged. “We fought at their side. We rescued their sister. They gave their word.”

“And you think that’s enough.”

“It shall have to be.”

Mama came stomping up, wild-eyed and wheezing. She wiped her cleaver on the side of her bag and dropped it inside.

“Boy,” she said, to me. “You ain’t dead.”

I looked down upon her, saw, for perhaps the first time, how old and small and weary she looked. “No,” I said. I was beginning to see things, in the dark, again. I heard the faint rustles of the huldra’s patient whisper.

Evis motioned toward his men, pointed toward the door that held Ameel Cant. Half a dozen halfdead trotted over, each bearing a crossbow and a twinkling silver bolt.

“Oh, no,” I said. “That will never do.”

Evis frowned. “She is mad. You have seen this before.”

“I said no.” I reached, and a trickle of power answered, and I smiled. “I saw her. She has hands. She has her eyes. She may have been dead, but she cries. That is my price. You are not a monster, you say? Then take her. Feed her. Care for her. Restore to her the life that was taken, by those who share your hunger.”

Evis lifted an eyebrow.

“And if I do not?”

I leaned down, so that my face was even with Evis’s. “Then I shall lead the day folk against your Houses. I shall speak the words that bring them out. I shall speak the words that will light the torches. I shall speak the words that will bring them down upon you, and I shall join them, and the fires shall burn and will still be burning when winter comes again.” I felt myself swelling, heard the huldra whisper. “Shall I begin?”

Evis looked sideways, made the slightest of nods at Mama.

She shouted something, threw a bundle of hair and twigs she’d had hidden in the palm of her hand, closed her eyes and spat.

I laughed. I saw the bundle coming, brushed it aside as easily as one waves away a gnat. “Oh, no,” I said. “That’s not the way. But let me show you a spell I know.”

I lifted my hand. The huldra showed me a hidden thing. I laughed at the thought of it, and I would have cast it forth, but for a subtle twisting in the dark, and a chill, and then the sound, faint, of a voice.

Darla’s voice.

I shrank. Memories came tiptoeing back, sneaking past the huldra’s dark fancies. Flames and fires, shouts and screams, and the smell of Darla’s hair.

She is dead, said the huldra. Dead, gone, take your vengeance.

Make.

Them.

Pay.

Mama cussed, drew her booted foot back, kicked me.

Hard, and then again, right below my right knee.

“Don’t you listen, boy,” she croaked, her face turned to mine. “I know what it’s sayin’. I know what it wants. But you listen to me now, boy. It might be strong, but it ain’t smart. You are.”

I saw flames, saw Darla, lolling and bloody and dead in my arms.

Mama hissed. No words, just a hiss, and then she reached up and slapped me.

“It knows your name, boy. But don’t you forget-it ain’t even got a name. It ain’t got nothing ’cept what you give it.”

The huldra shrieked in rage. I held it tight, letting it make me tall again, tall and strong and knowing.

Evis grabbed Mama, yanked her back. I lifted the huldra, made a sound that might have been the beginning of a long, secret word, and it was then that I saw something light and familiar amid the gathering shadows.

Darla. My Darla. Faint and ghostly and wavering, a candleflame in a whirlwind. But it was her, and she spoke. Somehow, above the thunder and din of the huldra’s cries for vengeance, I heard her speak.

“I am not dead.”

And then she was gone.

I froze, the unspoken word burning on my lips, the huldra raging and shaking in my hand, a maelstrom of strange, strong magics poised to leap from my fingers.

I am not dead.

I knew she was. I’d held her. I’d felt her body grow cold. I’d washed her blood from my skin.

But-

The huldra howled.

I took the huldra, forced it to fall silent, strained and strove and bent it briefly to my will. I cast out my sight, soared above Rannit and the rain and the clouds, looked down upon the city from a great and impossible height.

And then I spoke a Word wrenched from the heart of the huldra.

Magics spun, darting to and fro amid the clouds, gathering, flocking, wheeling and turning and diving, finally piercing the rain and the dark to soar over Rannit’s sooty rooftops and black, flooded streets like a flock of playful shadows. Here and there they converged, sped away, circled. Here and there they exploded, diverging into a thousand paths, only to come together again in a single fluid rush of shadow upon shadow.

And then, impossibly, they all came together, coalesced and settled, eagerly awaiting my call.

Darla.

“She lives,” I said, with some difficulty. I lowered the huldra, which burned in my hand, and met Mama’s bleary eyes. “Darla lives.”

Evis kept his face carefully blank. “Of course she does,” he said, agreeably. Disbelief was plain on his pale dead face. “Let it go, finder. Let Mama take it.”

I shook my head no.

Mama began to weep.

“You think me mad.” Normal words were hard to form. “But she lives. I have seen her.”

“Then you don’t need that thing no more,” said Mama. She opened her bag, held it out to me, under the huldra. “Let me have it, boy. Before it’s too late.”

Again I shook my head. “I have need of it yet. Darla waits for me.”

“Damn, boy, it’s lying! Can’t you see that? It wants you to use it! The longer you hold it the less of you is left!”

The huldra raged, still urging me to mayhem, still showing me images of Darla dying under a writhing mass of halfdead.

“No.” The huldra struggled in my grasp, trying to pull away. “She needs me. I can save her.”

Evis laid his hand on Mama’s shoulder, made some small sign to his men. “Permit us to accompany you.”

I didn’t need the huldra to see the pity in his eyes.

I shrugged. My shadows beckoned. The huldra buzzed and howled, but I squeezed, pushed its protests aside.

“Follow, if you can,” I said. “The way leads into the dark.”

I ascended, not bothering with the stairs, leaving a good portion of the floor above in sudden splintered ruin.

I took a single step, and then another. I only barely felt timbers fall around me as I shouldered them aside, and then I was back above the rooftops, back inside the dark.

My shadows waved to me, from across most of Rannit. Thunder and lightning played close about them, so close I grew suspicious. I coaxed another word from the huldra, spoke it, saw more shadows wheeling in the night-shadows similar to mine, but clothed in the will of another.

I smiled. The huldra hushed. Grudgingly, it offered another word, showed me a way to hide my approach, to silence the echoes of my words. I made myself invisible. Invisible and as silent as the passing of time.

I felt a questioning, a probing, a subtle touch emerge from deep within the night. I sidled away from it, watched it pass, chuckled at how easily I evaded being found. Memories came rolling back to me-memories of other walks in the dark, of other battles of shadow on shadow, of the way magics sprang so easily from my lips.

There was more too. I saw strange rooms, felt the heat of strange fires, heard screams, heard a women beg for mercy. There was also laughter, and I recognized it as my own.

I saw the Serge, saw flames sweep across it, boiling over dune and rock, leaping from sage bush to stunted dessert tree. Trolls fled, bounding, catching fire and screaming, too slow, too slow…

And music. Music played on instruments I couldn’t name, formed of notes that sang of magic. I saw a flower, plucked it, made it wither in my hand…

The huldra let slip the smallest hint of triumph.

I pictured Darla. I remembered her laugh, her perfume, the way her skirt hugged her legs as she walked.

I took what I needed from the huldra, pushed the music and the screams aside, struggled for a moment to remember my secret name. The huldra flashed hot in my hand.

“Show me what I need, and only what I need,” I said.

It seemed to me that the huldra laughed, harsh and dry, with the sound of old papers rustling.

But it obeyed.

I saw a row of three houses, set deep into the Hill. The windows were tall and wide and dark. The doors were barred, and bound with iron like garrison gates. The two outside houses leaned against the middle, as though exhausted, or asleep.

I tried, but could not pass my sight beyond them.

Words came, not mine, not the huldra’s.

“Mark this place well,” they said. “Some call it Oddling. Few pass therein.”

I questioned the huldra. It was silent, unhearing.

I sought Darla.

Shadows flew. The scene changed. I saw another warehouse, on the other side of the Brown. This one slanted down toward the river. Water ran from the back wall and across the floor and out the front. The roof showed light in half a dozen places.

And there, beneath it, lay Darla.

I shouted. Thunder broke. I charged toward her, a sudden flurry of shingles and loose timbers in my wake. She was alive, bound and struggling but alive, unless the huldra showed me a lie-

I slowed, demanded the truth from it. It grudgingly and with some confusion confirmed what I saw. Darla had not been killed. The body I had held had been made to appear as if it were hers. By whom, the huldra could not or would not say.

I went to her. I diminished as I walked. The huldra grew cooler, its words fainter, and I realized that as my hurt and rage lessened, so did the power of the thing I held.

I found myself across the Brown, alone, my boots sinking into mud and cowshit, the rain beating on me like it meant to not only kill me but wash away my corpse as well. I squinted into the night, made out a few lanterns swinging on the wind, what might have been light from a few windows, what might have been a fire burning under a shed roof a stone’s throw away.

Before me was a leaning warehouse, probably used to store hides or hooves or who knows what for the tanners upstream. And in there, somewhere, was Darla, alive and whole.

But surely not alone.

I had a wax-sealed tortoise-shell bent on devouring my soul. I reached for my army knife, but it was gone, lost somewhere in the rain. A smart man would have waited for Evis, would have gone for help.

There was no light in the warehouse. It was just a blur in the beating rain. I waited until lightning showed me the way to a door, and then I made for it, leaving my right boot behind, gripped fast by the greedy sucking mud.

I listened at the door.

The place was quiet, aide from the beat and roar of the rain and rolls of angry thunder echoing within. I hoped the din of the storm had concealed my squelching one-booted march, then dismissed the thought entirely-what good was stealth to a man about to face vampires or sorcerers or hairy old Troll gods with nothing but a single faint hope and a boot full of rain?

I shrugged.

I knocked.

Sometimes simplicity is the best approach.

“I know you have Darla Tomas,” I said, in a shout. “Maybe you know what I have. Maybe you know what just happened to the boys downtown. If it’s true that bad news travels fast, then this news should have been here for hours, because it’s about as bad as news can get-”

The door opened.

Helpful lightning flared.

Father Foon himself glared at me from inside. Behind him, lanterns were hastily uncovered.

At his back were maybe two dozen men in red and black Church armor. Their swords were bloody, and some of their old-fashioned breastplates sported big dents. I could see at least two pairs of armored feet laying toes-up and still on the wet floor.

Father Foon stopped gritting his teeth long enough to speak.

“You,” he said.

“Me,” I agreed. I pushed my way past him, smiled at the ranks of assorted gleaming blades that turned swiftly my way. “Where is she?”’

“Where is who?”