The Devil's Detective (26 page)

Some of the doors were actually gates, and Fool stood on tiptoe to peer over one of them. Behind it was a narrow strip between the buildings, almost too thin to even be called an alleyway. Similar narrow passages stretched away behind the other gates, most of which were empty, although in one Fool saw a pile of something that might have been bones, smeared with mud and showing signs of having been gnawed.

Nothing moved, nothing made a noise, but Fool sensed that he and Summer were being watched, peered at from countless places behind the wood and the doors and on the rooftops. It was colder here, and Fool's breath misted on each exhalation, damp clouds of vapor trailing him as he moved along. He caught glimpses of movement from behind the boarded windows, dark patches shifting as he went past. Something whispered, a long sound, drawn out and venomous. Movement skittered behind the doors, the sound of things without toes attempting to move quietly as they weighed up the new arrivals.

The road wasn't well used. In places thick banks of mud and detritus had formed, heavy ridges that had packed down over time and that gave little as Fool stepped on them. There was one ahead of him now, perhaps two feet high and rippling across the ground in front of him. He stepped on it, keeping his eyes on the doorways near him, glancing over
at Summer, who was still on the other side of the road but was maybe ten feet ahead of him. She looked back as he stood on the mound and he saw terror flitter across her face. He tried to jump away but he didn't react quickly enough to avoid the thing that rose up from the ground under his feet.

He was thrown back, had a brief image of something covered in mud and ordure emerging from the earth where it had buried itself, something that unfurled huge arms and that came toward him with its eyes glinting and its teeth bared. He managed to fire his gun, the flash dazzling him, and then something crashed into him, spinning him violently sideways.

Fool's spin ended against the wall, the impact rattling through him, the shock of it making him drop his gun. He was half down, face against wall when the demon struck him again, driving him sideways and fully over, his face scraping along the brickwork as his legs gave out from under him. He felt his skin tear, felt pain like the sting of insects dart across what was left of his cheek, and then his shoulder was into the mud and his head bounced against his gun. The demon leaped onto him, its feet pressing him farther down, forcing his face into the earth. He tried to breathe, took in a mouthful of foul-tasting dirt and choked, spitting, feeling the grit work across his teeth and grate over his gums. He took another breath, felt fragments hit the back of his throat, and retched, but he had nowhere to retch to, his mouth filling rapidly with bile and exhaled air and dirt and he was choking, couldn't breathe, and then there was a booming sound and the weight lifted off him.

Fool rolled, dragging his face out of mud that seemed reluctant to let him go and spitting out a mass of saliva and vomit and filth. Coughing, he hauled himself over, drawing in a great lungful of wretched air, his throat raw and painful, and then vomited again. His eyes ached, his face burned, a thin gruel of puke spattering across the backs of his hands. Using the wall, he managed to pull himself to a sitting position, wheezing. His eyes were unfocused, and in the blur something pale and dark in uneven patches scrabbled away from him. Fool blinked, clearing earth from his eyes, and saw Summer approaching, gun held in front of her. She fired again and a shriek filled the air. The demon leaped past Fool, darting back down the road toward the Houska, slamming into one of
the gates. The wood broke under the assault, tearing loose from the wall, and then the thing was gone; Summer fired once more, and then she was through the gate after it.

Fool managed to get to his feet. His cheek felt inflamed, and when he put his hand to it, it came away wet with blood. He blinked again, rubbed at his eyes, and his vision resolved itself. He coughed again, spitting. The gobbet that he expelled from his mouth was brown and semisolid. He reached down for his gun, steadying himself as a wave of dizziness swept through him, and then went after Summer and the demon.

The gate was situated between two of the buildings that wept water from behind their wooden-bound windows, and beyond it was another alley, the narrow strip sloping down into a pool of dark brown liquid. Fool had heard of this, of demons that lived in water above the ground, filling the buildings of their residence with the fluids they needed. As it spilled out, the water flooded around the buildings; here, it had gathered at the rear. The surface of the water was choppy, ripples banging into the walls and then moving back toward each other and tangling. Darts of light rode the ripples, fracturing and re-forming. There was no sign of Summer.

Fool stepped into the water, feeling ahead with his toes. The ground felt soft, pulpy, and he wondered what he was treading on. He felt sick, a swelling nausea that made his jaws clench and sent his stomach flipping and roiling. His vision was beginning to blur again, separating into two images and then coming back into one. He clenched his eyes shut, tried to concentrate, and as he opened them there was a bright flash.

It wasn't blue but the bright, bleached yellow of a muzzle flash, and on its heels there was a dull boom. The air jerked about him and he stumbled, falling to one knee; the water came up to his chest, smelled stagnant, made his nausea worse and he vomited a third time, unable to help himself. What came out was thin and mostly liquid, bitter on his tongue, but he felt better after and managed to stand again. He wondered about calling for Summer but didn't have the strength.

The alley came to a T-junction in a few more feet. Fool went left, following instincts he hadn't realized he had, reading a handprint on the wall and the way the surface of the water broke and merged to know that this was the way they had come. The water was deepening the farther
he went, was now up to his waist. He wished he had a lantern or light with him; the buildings loomed about him now and the flooded alley contained little light. Something brushed against his legs and then moved away, and he hoped it was floating garbage rather than any living thing. Which demons lived like this? He tried to remember but couldn't; Gordie would've known, of course, but Gordie was dead.

It was a dead end. Fool came to a brick wall where the buildings joined. Just above the waterline was a window and next to it was a missing chunk of brickwork, the crater clean and, when he put his finger against it, warm.
Summer's shot
, he thought. The window was open, and he pulled himself up onto the lower edge of it and then slowly climbed in through the opening. He ached, and it took several minutes to manage it.

The space beyond was dark and as he dropped into it, Fool had the impression of size and emptiness; it felt like a warehouse or a barn. The air was cold and the sound of his movements came back to him in repeating, descending patterns of echoes. He could see little, the damp light from outside falling only a few feet through the window. Fool listened but heard nothing from Summer or the thing they pursued. He couldn't see where to go and wished he had some light before remembering, finally, that he did.

Fool took the feather from his pocket and held it up above his head. Although it wasn't bright, its gleam seemed to spread throughout the space around him and gave shape to the shadows. It showed him a wide expanse of emptiness, the floors wooden and dusty. Here and there, square pillars of brick rose from floor to ceiling. A single set of footsteps, dark and wet, led away across the room, each slightly more faded than the last as Summer's feet had dried. Fool followed them.

The tracks threaded their way around the pillars, sometimes widely spaced, sometimes closer together.
She was running and slowing, getting her bearings, maybe listening
, thought Fool, and then,
Little show-off Fool.
It was a distraction from his fear, he realized, to think like this. Each step he took was a step after a demon whose violence was enough to loose souls from flesh and twist bodies into new, warped shapes; he had no reason to think he could stand up to it or defeat it, but he was following anyway.
Why
, he wondered,
why am I doing this? Because of the dead?
Because of all the Genevieves, sleeping on wires? Because of justice? No, no, none of those things.

Because of jurisdiction. Because if I don't, who will?

There was another gunshot, roaring in the near silence, and then a second later a scream, Summer screaming, the noise choking off suddenly in the middle, leaving things unsaid. Fool began to run, heading for where he thought the scream had come from. Summer's ghostly footsteps had faded to nothing, leaving little more than indentations in the dust every few feet that went toward the space's far wall. Light came from ahead of him, paler than the feather's glow, almost lost in it, wavering. He sped up, feeling the breath tear in his throat, feeling his body resist the effort, the damp cloth of his trousers pulling against his skin, his face throbbing, his belly clenching and flopping. The feather shook as he ran, its light shuddering back and forth. Fool came around one of the pillars, still following the marks in the dust and hoping that Summer would make another noise so that he could pinpoint her, that he would hear what sounds she might make over the rasp of his own breathing.

A shadow rose up ahead of Fool, arms outstretched, held up on innumerable spindle limbs like some huge spider waiting for him, emerging from its web toward him. His feet went from under him, somehow moving ahead of his upper body, and he crashed to the floor.

His first thought was that he needed to escape, and his second, following hard on its tail, was that the building was descending somehow, was dropping back into water. The floor was covered in liquid, thick and curdling, coating Fool as he rolled and scrambled. It slicked across his face and got into his mouth, was salty and bitter, and he spat, expecting the demon to pounce on him at any moment. His gun slithered in his grip and he tried to reassert his authority over it but it shifted, his finger slipping from the trigger and fumbling to find it again. He fell against one of the pillars, used it to brace himself, turning and holding the gun out, the feather up.

The thing hadn't moved.

It was making a noise; Fool risked looking up at it and saw liquid spitting and sizzling from it, tiny wisps of steam rising. Shadows pooled under it, stretched out toward him. No, not shadows, something else. It covered the floor and he saw its color, a dark rust, and it was blood, blood
swathed across everything, so much blood, and the thing above it wasn't a demon but was Summer.

She had been strung up between two of the pillars, her arms held taut in the grip of her torn uniform jacket, wrapped around the stone columns in two strands. Her head was down, her hair hanging in front of her face, and her belly had been ripped open and her intestines torn free and left to hang down in great loops, swaying slightly. Her trousers had also been torn and tied to the pillars, used to drag her legs apart and hold them open. Her flesh was white where it was visible, the rich and glittering red of spilled blood everywhere else. Tiny blue threads of lights played up and down her, bubbling out of her and then sinking back.
Her soul
, Fool thought, and then he caught a glimpse of something pale at his side and something crunched, hard, into the side of his head.

The blow sent Fool crashing back down into Summer's blood and slithering across the floor and it hurt, lashing spikes of pain across his head, and he was angry, raging, helpless. He tried to rise but the messages were warping somewhere between his brain and body, fracturing, so that he stood not upright but sideways, his legs refusing to do what he wanted them to, and he tilted and then fell again. There was blood in his eyes, and pain, and it was like drowning, the world thickening around him, losing definition, Summer's body suspended and decaying into a thing without edges and he could see the pale thing coming toward him and knew that this was it and he was done with it all, done with the helplessness and the fear and the agonies and uncertainties and his choices were being removed, each step of the demon's approach narrowing the strip of his life by another fragment until nothing remained. His gun was gone, drifting out somewhere in the tide of Summer's blood, lost to him, but he still had the feather clenched in his hand and he lifted it, marveling at the way it threw out its light, and despite everything Fool managed to smile as he waited for whatever came next.

“You're a very lucky man,” said a voice. It was a soft voice but it still crashed in Fool's head, echoing like the rolling of rocks down a canyon. He tried to sit but bands of pain tightened across him. Muscles in his lower back went into spasm, yanking him back to what he now realized was a soft mattress under him, bending him around as a dazzling wall of pain reached out through him and took tight hold. He heard himself moan and the voice said, “Don't try to move, not yet.”

While the pain receded, not vanishing but at least falling back to a place of threat rather than attack, Fool obeyed the voice and remained still. Someone moved around the foot of the bed and came to his side, took hold of his wrist. Experimentally, Fool moved his head; his cheek throbbed and his teeth ached, his whole jaw ached, but he could at least move. His vision was hazy, though; there were lanterns hanging from the ceiling of wherever he was, turned low, but their light and their shape were indistinct. He lifted his arm but the owner of the voice, a white hovering, restrained him and said, “A bit at a time. You've taken a serious beating and you'll hurt.”

The voice moved farther up the bed, and Fool saw that it came from a young man. He was dressed in a dirty white coat over Hell's usual thin gray smock shirt and trousers, and there were crescent moons of dead flesh under his eyes, stained black with tiredness. He was in focus, and with a sudden perspective shift, Fool saw that there was muslin hanging over his bed, draped in billowing waves to the floor, blurring everything beyond the bed. The man saw Fool looking and said, “To give you some privacy.”