Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel (3 page)

There were only a couple still in front of him, the others having turned and fled back through the homeless camp. A simple uppercut took out one of them, who had been too stunned even before that to scurry away. That left Blake, knuckles scraped raw by broken teeth and bone fragments, gazing at a skinny runt in a stained undershirt, barely old enough to shave.

“Kid…” It had been so long since he had spoken out loud that his voice rasped deep in his throat. “You just standing there isn’t making me any happier.”

The young skinhead just trembled and covered his ashen face with his hands.

Have it your way
. He obliged the kid by picking him up, hoisting him over his head, and tossing him onto the railway tracks. The kid bounced once, then scampered away. Blake watched him, then turned back toward the empty platform.

He figured it would be morning before the homeless recovered enough courage to come creeping out from beneath the wooden freight carriages and back to their cardboard hovels. That would give him at least a few hours use of the warmest nest he could find, to sleep off the fatigue from his long traveling and the fight with the skinheads. And maybe something to eat—the recalled vision of the potato charring on a stick roused a grumble in his empty stomach.

Just how tired he was didn’t register until he got jumped again. If his senses hadn’t been dulled, he might have heard them coming up from behind. But before he knew it, as he was leaning down to lift the flap of one of the empty cardboard boxes and check the rags inside for lice, the back of his skull seemed to explode in a red-tinged, shimmering wave. Teeth clenched against the dizzying pain, he turned his head enough to see his attacker, face crusted with blood from the struggle before, whipping the steel rod down for another blow. It caught him on his ear and one side of his jaw; he could feel the rebound against his skull as he toppled onto his back.

Another skinhead planted knees on his chest and a choking hand at his throat. A nasty little short-bladed knife drove toward his ribs.

He avoided the knife by rolling onto his shoulder, shoving aside the rags and cardboard box. The blade missed his chest, driving through the front and back of his overcoat instead, the sharp metal point pinning the grime-darkened cloth to a crack in the platform.

With the last of his strength, Blake lurched forward onto his knees. The pain and blood from before was nothing to what happened next. The skin over his rib cage ripped away, the raw muscles beneath clenching in torment.

The two skinheads backed up, gazing wide-eyed at the sight before them. The rod dropped clanging onto the platform.

With the sound of ripping gristle, Blake staggered to his feet. Still pinned to the concrete, the red-drenched overcoat tore from his shoulder and dangling arm, revealing how it and the raw flesh beneath were fastened together, as though some demented surgeon had imagined himself a tailor, combining skin and cloth into a garment that could never be shed.

The pain wiped out all of Blake’s thoughts. He might have stopped before, when the gangs had run away—but not now. Now it was too late.

His blood-spattered hand shot forward, grabbing one skinhead by the throat. He squeezed until he could feel the cartilage grinding and snapping, then slung the dead body like a club, knocking the other figure to the ground. He ground his boot into the second one’s face, until the hands stopped clawing at his leg and dropped away, lifeless.

Blake slumped down onto his knees, in the widening pool of his own blood. He had just enough strength left to tug the overcoat free from the knife, then wrap the joined cloth and flesh tighter about himself, his fist clenched just above the pounding of his heart.

He let his head drop, eyes fluttering closed. The groan of pain and despair from his whitening lips was all that was needed to damn the curse that had made him this way.

3.

Only a madman would tend a garden in weather such as this.

The dark storm clouds hung low in the sky, filling every direction visible to the naked eye, from one horizon beyond the city’s tall office towers to the masses of craggy hills that ranged even farther in the distance. Rain pelted down, hammering the streets as well as the people and cars on them. The gutters ran like rivers, swift and engulfing, the muddied waters sloshing across the sidewalks and into the doorsteps of the grey buildings. Yet somehow there were never enough streaming torrents to wash away all of the city’s filth and grime. The rain sluiced down along the buildings, leaving them just as filthy and blackened with soot as before.

The madman was so lost in the swirling tatters of his thoughts that he might not even have felt the lash of the rain upon his bent back. Through close-shaven stubble, his scalp shone pale and wet as he scrabbled through the contents of the frayed gunnysack at his feet.

With elaborate, methodical care, the madman set out the elements of his rituals. From the sack, he took out a child’s toy, a plastic action figure, worn and scuffed. Something that he had rescued from a rubbish can set out at the curb. The broken ends of a wooden toothpick had been stuck to the doll’s forehead, giving it what might have been horns. The plastic skin of the toy’s face had been painstakingly colored red with a marker. One of its feet had been snapped off and replaced with the cloven hoof of a farm-toy goat. The madman knelt down and set the ugly figure in place, digging its plastic feet into the wet ground so it would stand menacingly upright.

There was still more to be set out for the madman’s devotions to be complete. He dug more small figures from the sack, then knelt down with them at one side of a massive peach tree at the center of the garden square. Its withered, leafless branches raked like skeletal fingers through the rain-filled air above his head. When he stood back up, three more plastic action figures stood on the rain-soaked ground. Rescued from the trash, each now held a twig in its small, upraised hands, as though brandishing a weapon. The madman stepped back, nodding his head in approval of the miniature tableau.

“You know that tree’s dead, don’t you?”

The voice wasn’t one of those that nattered and yelped inside the madman’s head. Even he could tell that these words were real. Anyone in the deserted square might have heard them.

Startled, the madman looked back over his hunched shoulder. Across the sodden rubbish and brown weeds straggling up between the paving stones, a figure sat on one of the broken benches at the side. Vandals’ boots had broken apart the bench’s wooden planks, leaving just space enough for one person to sit. The dim moonlight that managed to slide through the shafts of rain revealed only the glint of blue eyes watching the madman.

“You’d better get away from there—” The madman didn’t like having his private rituals observed. “Before you get yourself in trouble.”

“Trouble?” The figure sitting on the bench sounded amused. “What kind of trouble?”

The madman dragged his gunnysack closer to the blackened trunk of the dead tree.

“This place is dangerous,” the madman muttered darkly. “
He
doesn’t like people coming in without his permission.”

“He?” A fragment of a smile emerged in the darkness. “Who exactly are you talking about, old man?”

“Him!” The madman could tell that he was being mocked. Face set in quivering anger, he pointed to the red-faced, cloven-hoofed toy figure imbedded in the ground. “If he sees you here, you’re done for. I can promise you that!”

“But how would he see me?”

“From up there, you idiot!” The madman pointed beyond the figure sitting on the bench, to the black office tower at one side of the garden square.

The figure on the bench didn’t bother to look up. “What’s that thing sticking out of his chest?” He nodded toward the horned doll in front of the peach tree. “Is that a nail?”

“That’s because they killed him!” The madman’s voice rose in demented triumph. “Look—it’s gone right through him.” He snatched up the doll and held it out before himself. With the thumb and forefinger of his other hand, he grasped the iron nail that had been thrust into it. The plastic squeaked as he pulled the nail out a bit, then shoved it back in. “With a great big spear—just like this! Killed the evil bastard dead!”

In the shadows at the side of the garden square, a scowl replaced the smile on the watching figure’s face.

“Killed him?” A sneer sounded in his voice. “But I thought he lives in that building? How can he do that if he’s dead?”

“I … I don’t know,” muttered the madman. He pawed at the side of his head, as though he could somehow dig through the bone of his skull and release some of the chaotic images trapped inside. “It’s all … mixed up. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet. But it will!” His eyes shone with absolute certainty. “I know it will! I can see it! As clear as I can see you sitting there! It’s all true—I know it is!”

“And who is it…” The watching figure’s voice softened as he studied the madman crouched near the dead pear tree. “Who’s going to kill him?”

“The three of them, of course—who else? Look—can’t you see them?” With demented certainty, the madman squatted down and laid the red-faced doll at the other toys’ feet, the fatal nail sticking up from its chest.

“Just like that! That’s how they did it! That’s how it’ll be!” The madman gazed down at the toys, fixated by the depiction of their victory. “This one here—” He tapped a dirty fingertip on the nearest one’s plastic head. “This one’s name is
Courage
!” His hand moved to the next. “And this is
Self-Sacrifice
!”

“And the last one?” The sneer in the watching figure’s voice had hardened to contempt. “What is he called?”

“That’s the one the Devil fears the most!” The madman nodded slowly. “His name is
Resolve
.”

Goaded into a flurry of action, the madman dragged more objects out of his tattered gunnysack. With the rain sluicing down his upraised face, he hung three more action figures on the lowest of the dead tree’s branches. They slowly turned about as they dangled there, with crude cut-out paper wings taped to their shoulders.

“It’ll bloom—” The madman muttered low to himself as he draped the leafless branches with salvaged holiday tinsel. “I know … I know it will!” He stepped back from the tree, looking at everything with which he had adorned it. The effect was of a handmade shrine, a place of single-minded devotion. “There’ll be leaves … and fruit! Like you’ve never seen! And on the day that it blooms, there’ll be an army, too…”

He drew out handfuls of other, smaller plastic figurines from the sack. Toy soldiers molded from dark green plastic—he carefully arrayed them in the grass at the tree’s base, surrounding the three action figures with their twig weapons raised above the one toppled over, with its red-painted face and toothpick horns.

“Just … just like that!” He looked over at the figure watching from the shadowed bench. “But the secret is, this army, it’s invincible! It’s so tough that no one can beat it. Not even him!”

“Is that so?”

“Yes!” The madman stood up from his crouch, shivering in excited certainty. “When they come out to fight him, then you’ll see. Because then it’ll be all over!” He pointed to the dark office tower. “Over for him!”

“You seem very sure of yourself.” The watching figure tilted his head to one side, studying the madman. “How do you know all this?”

“Because the archangels told me!” The madman pointed to the winged action figures dangling from the branches. “They know everything! They planned it all.” His voice turned hushed and reverent. “They planted the tree, you see. To bring hope. To the people … to everyone…”

He didn’t wait for any more words from the figure sitting on the bench. More objects came out of the gunnysack as the madman knelt down. Candle stubs, with burnt-black wicks at the center of the pale wax. With a half-empty book of matches, he managed to light them, their small flames wavering in the storm’s cold wind. He leaned back where he knelt in the wet grass, delighting in the effect of the trembling glow, then glancing over his shoulder to see if the watching figure had noted it as well.

Just as he did so, a car passed by on the street beyond, the beam of its headlights sweeping through the garden. That was enough to illuminate the figure sitting on the bench. The madman drew back, his eyes widening at what he saw.

A man—but something more than that. Tall and powerfully built, in the full strength of his early fifties. That was what the figure looked like. Garbed in an expensive cashmere coat that was somehow not dampened by the rain that drenched the garden square, and with a leonine, tawny hue to his skin and hair, as though descended from the ancient kings of Persia. The hard, chiseled planes of his face spoke of a barely bridled virility, the kind possessed by those sharp-clawed predators at the top of the world’s food chain.

The headlights swung off into the darkness, the garden square falling back into the night’s deep shadows.

Cowering back against the dead tree, the madman kept his wary gaze upon the watching figure. In the chaos of his thoughts, a dreadful realization was forming.

“What else,” the figure said slowly, “do you know?”

“There … there’ll be a battle.” As though hypnotized, the madman couldn’t stop himself from speaking. And revealing the rest of the prophecy lodged in his addled brain. “When the tree springs to life and blooms for all the world to see…” He pressed his knotted hands against his chest. “That’s when the people will know that the day has come. The day of the final battle. That’s when the three of them and their army will face down the Devil and his demons. They’ll fight—and that battle will decide the future of us all.…”

Another set of headlights, coming from one of the cross streets beyond, sent their harsh beam straight into the other man’s face. His eyes now shone with the piercing, inhuman blue of burning sulphur.

The madman shrank back against the blackened trunk, terrified. The beam from the passing headlights disappeared. But the other man’s eyes remained lit up, bright as two intense flames.

“Who…” The madman found his voice. “Who are you?”