House of Corruption (36 page)

“What is wrong with you?” he asked.

“How dare you ignore me!” she screamed.

Reynard pulled his arms inward, twisted. The Beast forced itself into his arms, his legs. He commanded it to stay back as he felt the pressure in his body, felt as if he moved that pressure into his wrists and ankles. He strained until metal clasps began to squeal.

Now.

He lurched against the straps with all his strength. The buckles snapped. He pulled the straps off his ankles and rolled off the gurney. Wilhem released Kiria and slid from his chair. Reynard raced to the fireplace. He took the only weapon he could find—the iron poker. Wilhem slipped a hand under his coat and removed a black derringer—a four-barrel Sharps—and thumbed back the hammer.

Reynard yanked the door open. Wilhem fired.

The bullet splintered in the door’s frame above Reynard’s head. He ran into a receiving hall, past an obscene fountain toward a massive staircase. They were on the ground floor. He considered the front door, heard the collective voices of the Eng Banka outside, and aimed for the staircase. No exit there.

He ascended the staircase, three steps at a time. Wilhem burst from the laboratory door, took aim, and fired again. The bullet cracked above Reynard’s left ear.

He continued to the second floor and raced down the east corridor.
They knew
, he thought,
knew I would come, they brought her here to lure me to this accursed house, to take my blood
. Both Kiria and Lucinda had played upon his emotions, his guilt, knew just how to manipulate him. They had played him in New Orleans, in Marseille, the stinging grief of his weakness filling him with rage.

It was still very dark, but he caught the faint glow creeping underneath the door of Lasha’s room. He ignored the whispering, the fell traces of those collected spirits; his obsession overwhelmed any fear. He reached the door, found it locked.

“Lasha,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

“You see what the unbridled animal makes us?” Wilhem shouted in the distance. “God has abandoned us. You, of all people, should see!”

Reynard leaned his shoulder into the door. It did not budge. He threw his weight against it and the door held. He slammed a third time and the door cracked inward, the jamb splitting open. He rushed inside. The curtains were parted to reveal the rain-splattered night, the candle on the nightstand nearly spent. He focused on the bed, confused at the disorganized covers and the heap of pillows. He would take his sister and fight his way downstairs, slip back into the underground, and he would kill anyone who tried to—

“Lasha?”

Reynard lifted the netting aside. He froze.

Wilhem entered the room. He started to speak, the pistol in hand, but his words caught short as he too approached the bed. In the candlelight he was a ghost, empty, life bleached from his pallid skin. His daughter said he was dying and, from his wretched look, he had been dead a long time. Both men stood dazed at the sight of the limp body stretched across the bed.

Kiria’s head lay upon the pillow. Beside it, Lucinda’s body lay like a discarded dress, shrunken and empty. Tissue and bones and flesh were all nearly dissolved, shapeless beneath the red silk faille, the sheets redolent with vinegar and sour blood.

Reynard’s reeling mind registered the truth of it—it was not Kiria slapping him in that laboratory, not her, not her. The thing that now wore her face was the same that drank little girls’ blood, she who killed Bill and Frederick and tore out his heart, she who slaughtered men with her bare hands, she who commanded wild men to burn monks alive.

“Damn you,” Reynard whispered.

“My daughter,” Wilhem said.

“
Damn you to hell!
”

Reynard raised the iron poker and charged—

Wilhem lifted his pistol—fired—

The bullet sunk into Reynard’s belly. The poker fell and Wilhem kicked it away.

Kiria is dead.

Reynard fell to his face.

I am dead.

“This ends tonight,” Wilhem said.

He clutched Reynard by the collar and dragged him out of the room. He pulled him down the hall and down every step of the staircase with a trail of wet crimson in his wake. Reynard could do nothing but suffer as he slid, limp, helpless. When his hands felt his stomach, warm fluid sluiced through his fingers.

At the bottom step Kiria—her shell, possessed by the penanggal that was Lucinda—stood waiting for them. She considered Reynard at the end of Wilhem’s arm with a nonchalant expression.

“Whatever happened?”

Wilhem struck her across the face. “You filthy whore!”

“I did it for you!” she shrieked.

Wilhem struck her again and she dropped to her knees, cowering, screaming with wet sobs. He was not moved; he dragged Reynard through the front door and outside onto the lawn. Over a hundred Eng Banka chanted around bonfires strewn along the hill, many in groups, most wearing their snarling masks. Some had collapsed into a trance, twitching, while others opened their arms and begged the spirits of the house. Crude drums kept a rhythm. The natives focused their rites around the many belawang poles, makeshift idols smeared with raw flesh or eggs or blood.

Sacrifice.

Lasha is mine.

This ends tonight.

Sacrifice.

Something terrible to going to—

Wilhem dropped him in their midst. The chanting and drumming ceased. He spoke with a loud voice in a strange language, and though Reynard did not understand the words he understood the passion in it.

“
Maligang requires your voices
,” Wilhem cried, “
to cast off the River of Death. The evil spirit will leave tonight. We will complete the deed. The spirits of this house will be yours, thousands upon thousands into your nostrils.
”

Voices erupted in a triumphant shout.

“
You will drive the strangers from your rivers and mountains and cast them back upon the ocean. Your heads will know no equal. Your longhouses will be free from fear. You will rise before toh bulu and live forever at baway daha. Forever!
”

More shouting. Arms raised with spears and knives gripped beneath passionate fingers. They were a host of wolves, howling, a collective bestial cry.

“
This one is toh joat sujan
,” he said. “
He wants to hurt Maligang. He will tear your children from their mothers’ breasts. He will drink their blood.
” He addressed the closest group of natives. “
Cut off his head and burn him with fire. Cast his bones upon the field for Maligang to see. She will know you love her. She rewards those whom she loves.
” With a loud voice he raised his arms, again addressing the crowd. “
Daa’tu Maligang!
” he shouted, and all joined him in unison, poised toward the house in common covenant. “
Daa’tu Maligang! Daa’tu Maligang!
”

Wilhem left them shouting, ascended the porch and back into the house. He closed the door and locked it with many latches, sealing it with a heavy iron bar. Voices followed him in a thunderous wake:

“
Daa’tu Maligang!
”

36

The rain stirred Reynard from encroaching blindness, scratching at his neck and hands and head, draining under his clothes. He inhaled and coughed up bile, and when he touched at his stomach his shirt was slippery with his own blood.

I’ve been shot
.

His fingers edged against the wound, a hole the width of his thumb. His innards shrank into a painful fist and he groaned, sick, terrified to vomit for fear it would be blood. The pain clarified his senses, and his senses clarified his pain, and when he moved his stomach felt pierced with a knife. The pressure popped with a dull silence, and what seemed like the pounding of his heart became drums and voices. The Eng Banka had resumed their ceremony.

He rolled to his side and his gut provided fresh agony. It held the pain selfishly, refusing to let it reach his feet, arching into his ribs and lower back.

I’ve been gut-shot
.

Hands clutched his arms and legs and lifted him. Pain threatened to sink him back into oblivion. Kiria spoke highly of Dayaks in general, finding them a resourceful people, but those misguided men under Lucinda’s thrall were drunken with their own chanting, imbibed with blood-lust, hurtling the night along toward some dreadful end.

Kiria
.

Faces leered down at him as they carried him into the frenzied crowd, bare-faced and snarling mask alike, their skin catching the firelight like gibbering demons. They dropped him beside the largest bonfire. He did not resist. The natives formed a wide circle. He opened his eyes to the rain and saw Carlovec Manor as it towered above them, its windows illuminated by another burst of lightening. It was impenetrable, a fortress. It had crushed him like an insect. He hated that house nearly as much as he hated himself.

Lasha.

In that second, he wished the Beast would come.

Boys have all sorts of inklings; doesn’t mean we should follow them all.

Metamorphosis accelerates a man’s metabolism...

Makes a man a raving animal...

You have been changed
.

Everything was so clear now—no amount of alcohol or lust or anger or self-mutilation could dispel his lycanthropy, all because he had subconsciously encouraged the Beast with every indulgence, every raised fist to a silent god. True, both the existence and the removal of the silver bullet had altered his body forever, but there was more. He felt the change since Metairie, like grasping in the dark and knowing the Beast came because he had given it silent permission.

If it is of you, of that which makes you Reynard
...

The Beast waited, as it had always waited. He imagined extending his arms with a silver bridle in his hands. He opened his arms wide to embrace it, tether its raving jaws with the bridle, hold it, fight against it, feel its strength bleed into his head. His skin flushed and his eyes dilated, He felt his muscles shift beneath his skin, that familiar edge of dying.

This is wrong
!

—
Raving animal
—

I cannot do this!

—
Who is the master?
—

He had promised Lasha. Given his promise. She was all that mattered now, all that he cared to live for—to keep her safe. The Beast snapped and thrashed against that bridle in his thinking-hands and pushed it aside. He screamed at the awful, familiar pain that broke his body apart. Slippery agony stabbed at his knees and hips as joints slid from their sockets.

—
That which makes you Reynard
—

His claw-like nails brushed at his shirt and ripped it open. The natives surrounding him twitched collectively, backed off, and fell silent. He dipped into the wound, plucked the lead slug from his stomach and dropped it like a pebble into the grass. He screamed again, more a howl than a voice. Blood pumped free, clotted, stopped. His body tensed and slackened until the spasm drew him forward into a grotesque fetal position.

The Eng Banka widened the circle even further, their faces wide-eyed with fear. From their midst came a tall, barrel-chested chieftain draped in necklaces of rattan and bone. He wore his wolf-like mask, its muzzle snarling with swirls of paint. Black tattoos ran from feet to belly and up his neck, and at his bare chest the markings shaped the hornbill, a bird of power. He gripped a naked mandau in his hand, the iron blade as long as his arm.

Reynard’s muscles bunched and slid aside, his skin bathed in sweat.

—
Raving animal
—

Lasha
!

—
Doesn’t mean we should follow them all
—

He had not asked to inherit Basta’s Legacy, but he had allowed it to become the doppelganger of his pride, his rage, his self-hatred. He had shifted accountability to everything and everyone but himself. When he realized this, really
knew
, the bones in his face cracked as the Beast shoved itself from beneath his skin.

Lasha
.

Reynard leapt at the chieftain, snarling, his claws at the man’s throat. The chieftain’s mask tumbled free, revealing a face distorted by terror. He shouted a hoarse cry. Reynard bit down into his shoulder until a bone cracked between his teeth. He released his grip bit again, fast, jerking him hard. The salty flow of flavor ran over his tongue and down his throat and the thirst, the endless thirst—

—
Raving animal
… 

—
What?

The chieftain gurgled and spat blood.

—
What am I...

...Doing
?

Reynard thought of the most ordinary of things, a shipping manifest on his desk back in New Orleans: Thirty thousand seven hundred dollars of cotton from Macon, Georgia to West Virginia; his bedroom; how many steps between his door and the kitchen—sixty seven; what hour the post dropped by the office—ten o’clock and always late; the bitter taste of coffee before sugar; Lasha and Eleanor weeding in the garden with their knees brown with dirt; Gordon grooming the horses with his brush in fine, even strokes, smelling of oats and milk.

He dropped the chieftain from his mouth.

—
Doesn’t mean we should follow them all
—

He snapped his maw above the chieftain’s face, splashing saliva, and left the man writhing in his own urine. Movement surged around him. Eng Banka converged in a swirling wave, dozens strong, plunging at him with spears and blades and knives. Reynard stood on his hind legs, swiping at the spears with his paws, snapping with his jagged teeth, clutching one spear with his jaw and snapping it in half.

He broke through their line, dropped to all fours, and leapt up the driveway. Spears flew from all directions and thudded into the mud from both sides. From his back came a
whish whish
and two feathered darts thudded into his throat. He scraped them out and ran into another cluster of men, tearing them aside. One sinewy native confronted him outright, a spear fast in his hands.