Fantasmagoria (2 page)

“I have my sources,” Vernal said. “All you need to know is there’s plenty more where that came from.”

“And it doesn’t bother you, Therian, trading in man-flesh?”

“No more than it bothers you eating it, aminal. And I’m no Therian.”

The jackal smiled. The corners of his lips turned up to his eyes, far wider than any human could smile. His teeth were white and sharp and shone even in the faint light. “Such disdain for the Empire. Aminals, at least, are proud of their race.”

“Are we doing business, or discussing politics?”

“Well, I can’t very well discuss politics with them.” He nodded to the eyes in the dark. “Or are you only here to feed the dogs?”

Vernal stayed silent.

The jackal stepped forward and leaned close. He was two heads taller than Vernal. “Jackals have excellent hearing, Mr. Wort. And we can smell a lie.”

Vernal didn’t try to hide his fear. There was no point. The jackals could hear his heart beat faster, could smell him sweat. “You have something for me?” he asked.

“Our deal was for five hundred pounds of man-meat. There isn’t more than two hundred in that bag.”

“Well, I didn’t come with just the bag, now did I?”

The jackal-man turned to watch Cecil struggling with the sopping load.

“He’s not quite three hundred pounds,” Vernal said, “but then I figured there’s a probably premium for freshness.”

The jackal studied Vernal for a moment. “I can see where you earned your nickname, Mr. Wort.”

“Call me Vernal.”

“You know what we will do to him, don’t you?”

“Nope,” Vernal replied. “And I don’t want to. I already know what he did to two little girls last week, and that’s enough nightmare to last a year.”

The jackal looked at the scratches on Cecil’s face and the scrapes on his knuckles. “I see.”

“No. You don’t. But I’m trying to forget it, so I’m not going to explain.”

The jackal nodded to his colleagues, who erupted from the dark, whooping and howling, and descended on Cecil, who didn’t have time to turn. He screamed, and kept screaming as vice-strong jaws sunk their teeth into his body and pulled him down the dark hall in spastic tugs.

“Vernal, please!” He begged as he slid by, arm outstretched. His dense, muscled body smeared blood in its wake.

“Save his face for me,” the jackal called to his pack.

Vernal held out his hand. “My payment.”

The jackal reached into his vest pocket and produced a brass key, long and tarnished and studded with movable teeth like a combination lock. Vernal reached out but the jackal-man pulled back. “Why is this key so important?”

Vernal said nothing. He waited.

“Forget that the Empire would boil you alive for this, publicly. What about Pimpernel?”

“Who?” Vernal feigned.

“Erasmus Pimpernel. You outbid him for this key.”

“Oh?”

“He offered a small fortune. But as you intelligently surmised, Imperial money is just paper to us.”

“Your concern is touching, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Vernal held out his hand again. “My payment, please.”

The jackal bared his teeth and handed the key to the little man. “As you wish.”

“If you’re so worried about this fellow Pimpernel, why didn’t you just give the key to him?”

“Well, you know what they say about enemies of friends with enemies.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Vernal wrapped the key in cloth, reached into his pants, and stuck it between his ass cheeks. “I don’t have friends,” he said with a grunt.

A long, gurgling scream echoed from the dark and faded into a slobbering moan, a blubbering, begging lament.

“I can see that.” The jackal licked his lips. As his tongue swung around his narrow muzzle, a drop of saliva fell to the ground. “I must confess, I’d considered eating you. But any man who isn’t afraid of Erasmus Pimpernel . . .”

“Frankly,” Vernal climbed down into the ravine. “I’m more worried about my poor sister.”

“Your sister?”

“Yeah.” Vernal turned. “Last week, her two little girls were killed, and now,” Vernal nodded down the dark tunnel, “her husband seems to have gone missing. Good day.”

“Good day, Mr. Wort.”

(TWO) The Indescribable Peace of Impending Doom

Jack Fulcrum was waiting to die.

It had been difficult at first. Nobody really wants to die. But for gunslingers, who expect a violent end, “natural causes” seems an ignoble departure. It was better to get shot in the head, or maybe the back, like a soldier in the line of duty, than to suffer a slow and insidious creep. That was for bankers and politicians and patsies, who always died gasping for breath in some hospital bed surrounded by machines and the sucking greed of their loved ones.

But the more he thought about it, the more Jack realized the truth. He deserved it. It wouldn’t right any wrongs, but it would prevent him from committing any more, and that seemed like a good thing. It glazed his vile demise with an aura of justice. And so Jack settled into the last weeks of a long life of violence with a peace he had never known.

Most days, that meant sitting at The Dive reading the paper or watching the world pass and waiting for his silent stalker to catch him. He liked to think of it as a noble cancer, and when he felt particularly weak, like today, he would lean back in his chair—the special reinforced one the guys kept for him by the window—and close his eyes and wait for the end.

But this wasn’t most days, and as he sat there, eyes shut, he felt a small tap on his hand. A greasy-haired child had come to deliver a message about her friend and her friend’s dad and about the mean things he did, and Jack figured, shit, what’s one more?

An hour later, his final, indescribable peace ended in a stale apartment on the third floor of a quiet building. The door was open and Jack walked in and saw Nero LaMana, the kingpin, the Butcher of Battle Street, sitting on the couch flanked by a small army of well-suited henchmen, including two minotaurs and a banshee.

LaMana held up his hands as soon as Jack opened the door. “Before anybody does anything crazy, I just wanna talk.”

Jack squinted. Nero wasn’t much of a talker, but he was a big man, almost as tall as Jack, and bald. He sported a black-and-white-striped suit coat with matching tie. He looked like he had just come from a funeral. Jack looked at all the goons. Maybe the funeral was still to come.

LaMana stood. “You wouldn’t’ve come if I just asked, Jack.”

That much was true. And then it made sense, how the street urchin knew where to send him, why there was no one in the foyer, why the door to the apartment was unlocked. LaMana had brought him deep into the slums near the Old Arcade. That close to the Black Hand, it was no man’s land for the syndicates. Smart.

Jack looked around the room and started counting. “Four . . . five . . . six . . .” He pointed at each of LaMana’s thugs. “You need sixteen guys to have a chat?”

LaMana smiled. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure it was fuckin’ enough. I mean, you’re ‘Blackjack’ Fulcrum, the most prolific hit man in history. My mouth to Goyen’s ears, you’ve killed more people than Kraxus.”

Jack scowled.

“You’re a fuckin’ legend. And you know what?” He lowered his voice. “My guys’ll probably kill me for saying this, but it’s damned well deserved, too. How long have your boss and I been trading blows, Jack?”

Jack shrugged. He couldn’t remember a time when LaMana and Pimpernel weren’t kicking each other in the balls.

Pimpernel. Jack clenched his fists.

“Exactly. And in all that time, how is it that cocksucker didn’t have you wipe my gang clear off the planet?”

“He never asked.”

“Ha!” LaMana pointed at Jack in jest. “He never asked, Jack, because he’d knew you’d never do it. Am I wrong? Tell me I’m wrong. You can’t, because it’s true.”

“What do you want?”

“I used to want you workin’ for me. Then I wanted you dead.” The kingpin paced across the faded rug in the middle of the room. “Fuck,” he nodded. “I really wanted you dead.”

“Seems like you tried a few times.”

“Yeah, but no one will take a hit on you anymore. Look at that arm.” Nero nodded to Jack’s right, his draw arm. “The Jackrabbit, the fastest gun in the world.” LaMana scowled at the void under Jack’s trench coat. “Where’s Rosa?”

“Gone.” Jack was unarmed. Sixteen men. He realized he should never have given up on a violent death.

Nero raised his eyebrows. “No shit.” He paused.

Jack ran his eyes over the menagerie. The little living room was a garden of statuary, stone-faced and silent. Jack knew, in a crowd, you always take the toughest guy first. It slows the others down, makes them think twice. The black and tan minotaur. He was the one. He glowered at Jack over pulsating nostrils.

Jack looked back at Nero. “What’s stopping you?”

LaMana turned and lifted a finger. “Life is funny, Jack. Yesterday, I would’ve relished the chance to catch you without Rosa. But today . . .” He shrugged and walked over to a window. “The people in this town, they don’t know the truth. Take this loser you came to brace.” The kingpin pointed to a thinning man in a wife-beater, bound and gagged and stuffed in a corner behind the living statues.

Jack should have known better than to walk into the unlocked apartment. But then in his condition, he wasn’t thinking clearly, at least not like he used to. It wasn’t going to be long now. He could feel it. Days, tops. If he got out of the apartment alive.

LaMana went on. “He’s one of Pugs’s. Bets on the saurus races we run out by the Serrated Hills.”

“How much is he in for?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that he beats his kids, and on nothing but the word of street--”

“Nice play.”

“You always had a thing for kids.”

Jack shrugged.

“You came here to smash his face in.”

“And?”

“And he still won’t get it. None of these losers do. The Empire doesn’t keep the peace in this town. Neither does City Hall. Or the Black Hand. And for damn sure it ain’t Pimpernel or me.”

Jack waited.

“Your boss, you know he’s a sick, sadistic fuck. But he’s smart. He stays holed up in that dungeon he calls an office, never comes out. No one sees him. That’s a problem when you’re trying to curry favor with the locals. I got City Hall. But Pimpernel . . . he’s in good with the Empire. But more to the point, he’s got you. Or at least he did.” LaMana paused. “He’s gonna kill you, Jack.”

Jack cocked his head.

“When you go back to that shitty bar you hang out at . . .”

“The Dive.”

“Whatever. Your old buddies Rabid and Togo are going to be there waiting for you. They’re gonna call you in to see the boss, and Zen-ji’s gonna run you clean through with that monster sword of his.”

“How do you know?”

LaMana snorted. “I know some things. Guys like me, we have lots of friends who know things.” He nodded. “And that brings us here. Now that your time with Pimpernel is up, I want you.” He pointed at Jack. “Come work for me.”

Jack looked down at his hands. He clenched them shut. He felt so weak now. So weak. He didn’t know if he could take the first minotaur, let alone the second, the banshee, and thirteen others. He didn’t know whether to believe LaMana or not. But it didn’t matter.

Jack shook his head.

“Why the hell not?” LaMana raised his arms. He seemed hurt.

“They call you the Butcher for a reason.”

Nero thought for a moment. “This is true. And?”

Jack shrugged. “And I had enough killing.”

The kingpin took another step forward and opened his arms. “Is what I do any worse than the Dark Red?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You know it’s not. And my guess is, that’s why you hate your boss. You know what happens to those kids that go missing from his orphanages.” LaMana looked right at Jack. “Right?”

“Who says I hate him?”

“Aw, come on! Your hatred of the man is practically legendary. Everybody knows you’d snap his prick spinal cord if you got half the chance. He’s got something on you. But whatever it is . . .” LaMana took another cautious step forward. “This is it, Jack. The end. He’s coming for you.”

“That’s no reason to go over.”

“You’re gonna let that child-selling hemorrhoid rub you out? Just like that? No fight or nuthin’?”

Jack looked LaMana in the eye. The Butcher looked right back.

“Maybe I don’t deserve to live.”

“Oh, I get it.” The kingpin nodded. “I see. Penance for that shit at the wharf. Is that it?” He kept nodding. “Shit. You’re the only one of your kind I ever met who had a conscience.”

“My kind?”

“You don’t get to be kingpin without the ability to read people. It’s like my superpower. Maybe you won’t come over. BUT . . .” LaMana leaned in and lowered his voice. “I want to give you something to think about.”