Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel (6 page)

“Probably the most dangerous one you’ll ever have.” He slid farther to the side of the limo, making room for Hank to join him. “Honestly, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

The promise of danger proved too tempting for Hank. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give you five minutes.” He gripped the top of the door and began working his bulk inside. “But I’m just warning you. I’ll be mucho pissed’ if you waste my time.”

The hollow sound of the rain drumming against the roof filled the limo’s interior. The upholstered ceiling pressed hard against the top of Hank’s head. Even given the spaciousness of the limo’s interior, the dwarfish lawyer was squeezed tight against the other door.

“Let me begin by saying this—” The dwarf signaled to the chauffeur, and the limo began slowly rolling through the city streets again. “You aren’t the only hit man that my client is employing today. In fact, as far as I’m aware, every other killer in the city is already on his payroll.”

“So what does he want with me?” Hank had a close-up view of the dwarf. The rashes and boils covered the beak-nosed face as well, as if the small man wouldn’t have been ugly enough without them.

“Quite simply, you’re the best,” continued the dwarf. “Not only because of your size and skill. But also, more importantly, because of your …
condition
.”

Hank stiffened. “My condition?”

“Your
pantophobia
. That’s the medical term for it, I believe. In layman’s terms, a complete and utter absence of fear.”

Hank growled. “How do you know about that?”

“I’ve read your medical records. Apparently, you’ve had it since birth. The most extreme case ever recorded, they say. A real advantage for someone in your line of work.” The dwarf displayed his yellow-toothed smile once more. “Which is why my client is so anxious to have you on our team.”

“You’ve read”—Hank’s growl grew worse—“my medical records?”

The lawyer acknowledged the comment with a nod. “My client likes to know who he’s dealing with before he makes them an offer. To be precise, we know everything about you, Hank. We know exactly how many people you’ve killed in your current profession. And we know all about the trouble you caused at the orphanage, when you were a boy. You were sent there just after you’d killed your parents, I think. The first two deaths in a very long line.”

Anger swelled in Hank’s body; the limo’s seat creaked, as though it were about to break. His fists clenched as he struggled to restrain the impulse to reach over and crush the lawyer’s wiry-haired skull.
You sonuvabitch.
Hank seethed inside himself. The rage didn’t come from this man knowing so much about him. And not from the bit about that pantophobia crap, or whatever it was called. No, it was the way that the lawyer had made it sound that somehow his parents’ deaths had been connected to all the scumbags he had taken care of in his job as a hit man. When actually there was no connection at all, except for there having been dead bodies at the end of the process. He gritted his teeth, shoving that certainty tighter into his thoughts. No goddamn connection at all.

But he knew he was lying to himself. There was a connection, and he hated the dwarf for knowing it as well. The lack of fear, that pantaphobia thing he had been born with—it made it easy for him to kill criminals. But it was also why his parents had died. That was the connection.

He had been nine years old, his parents still alive. He’d been huge then as well, not as big as he was now, but going on adult size. Strong as an ox. And worse, fearless. Which got a nine-year-old kid into all sorts of trouble, whether he meant to or not. And his poor mom and dad, worried about what might become of him if he went on that way, had tried to cure him of it one Halloween. If fearlessness was the problem, then the cure was to somehow put fear into him. They tried the best they could: jumping out of the dark in his bedroom, draped in bedsheets to make themselves look like ghosts. It didn’t work—he wasn’t scared—but he did think that the ghosts were real. He could still see every detail in his mind, as if it were happening again. He saw that huge nine-year-old boy leaping out of bed with the baseball bat he kept leaned against the wall, then attacking the ghosts with a flurry of blows. The fear might not have been there inside him, but he had still watched in horror as his parent’s blood trickled toward him from behind the sheets and out across his bedroom floor.…

Hank still felt sickened by it. He knew that everything he felt about that night would never disappear. How could it? The guilt had made him what he was. All through growing up in the orphanage—and then his career as a professional hit man—it had always been that guilt that had driven him forward. Driven him to try and cure the fearlessness that was his curse. The more dangerous the places and fights that he walked into, the better. Maybe one of them, someday, would be enough to bring that hotly desired but never experienced substance, that fear, into his heart. And then maybe he would somehow be at peace.

He opened his eyes and looked over at the dwarf. “You ever mention my parents again,” said Hank, “and I’ll kill you. My past is my own affair. The same goes for my condition, too.”

The lawyer held up a mollifying palm. “If I’ve upset you, I’m sorry. Everyone needs secrets, and yours are safe with me.” Beneath his insincere words rose the sound of the limo’s wide tires rolling through the sodden streets. “The only reason I brought it up is because I wanted to make it clear to you why my client needs you on his side. All the details aren’t in yet, but there could be a bloodbath in this city before this day is through. And it’s vital that we have someone on our team who’ll stick with the job to the end, no matter how tough the going gets.”

Hank leaned back, still regarding the lawyer suspiciously. “This guy you work for, who is he?”

The dwarf’s scabby finger tapped the starlike symbol on his ring. “Let’s just say he’s a businessman, with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.”

Hank’s laugh was a quick, rumbling bark. “I’ve heard
that
before. And the targets?”

“There are three of them in total. Three men, by all accounts.”

“And you’re sure they’re bad, these guys?” he asked. “Because I don’t hurt innocents. Just people who are in a position to hurt me, too.”

The dwarf acknowledged the comment with another nod. “Rest assured, these men are the worst kinds of scum you’ll ever find. In fact, considering what they’re planning to start today, you could even call them mass murderers.” He turned away and glanced at the rivulets of water sluicing over the side windows. “So … can I tell my client you’ll take the job?”

Hank had to admit that his interest had been piqued. “Okay,” he said. “I’m in. What I need from you now are their IDs, and the address where I can find them.”

“Ah…” The dwarf smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid it isn’t quite as simple as that. You see, their identities and whereabouts aren’t clear to us at the moment. All we know is that they must be here in the city somewhere. Either as a group, or on their own.”

“But … if you don’t know where they are, how the hell am I supposed to kill them?”

“I suppose by just … doing what you do best…” The dwarf folded his scabby hands to explain. “You see, my client has instructed me to inform you that despite your strength and skill, killing these three men will be far from easy. So, if that difficulty in killing them is the only way to recognize them, he suggests that you simply attack everyone in this accursed city who’s dangerous enough to hurt you, and let us know when you finally meet your match.”

Hank glared at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

“Completely.” The dwarf’s beady eyes didn’t even flinch. “As I said, my client has every faith in you. So rest assured, however many people you end up killing today, he is more than happy to pick up the tab.”

Every bastard who can take a shot at me
 … The danger of it called to Hank.
Every scumbag who might be able to do me damage … Then, when I meet someone who can do the business, I just ring up this dwarf and tell him that I’ve found his guys.

Hank gave a nod, sold on the brutal clarity of it. “Okay,” he said. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

5.

He had already lost so much blood, he was growing dizzy.

The city’s streets seemed faint and without substance as Blake plodded forward. With one arm, he clutched his blood-soaked overcoat to the torn flesh over his ribs. The red strings of the broken stitches dangled from under the coat’s bottom hem. A trail of bloodspots, some as big as his hand, mingled with his muddy footprints on the pavement behind him.

He kept to the city’s backstreets, trying to avoid anyone seeing him. But it was impossible. Even in this dump, a man staggering along, leaking blood, drew attention. And not the helpful kind. He knew that the sight of his begrimed, wounded form disgusted everyone who spotted him. Some people crossed the street to get away from this filthy specter; others took more direct action.

Children were the worst. Their parents might throw curses in his direction, but the kids used stones. Blake felt a couple of fist-sized rocks strike him in the back; he turned and glared at the little bastards, but the sight of his grime-darkened face didn’t scare them away. Instead, the next rock hit him just below the eye, drawing another leak of his body’s rapidly dwindling resources. He watched as a couple of adults came up behind the kids, putting hands on their shoulders, as though defending them from him. Too weak for a confrontation, he turned and stumbled on.

He managed to leave the crowd behind him, at least far enough to slip into the hiding place of an unlit alley. Sinking against the wall’s base, he tried to recover his strength, one ragged breath after another. The blood dripping from underneath his coat made a darkly shining pool beneath him. He pressed his hand against his side. There were things that he needed to do, things he had come to this stinking city for—but the chances of pulling all that off were nonexistent if he didn’t get the wound sewn up.

For a moment, he thought that the loss of blood had sunk him into delusion: somehow, he could hear animals whining from somewhere nearby. But when he raised his head and looked around, he couldn’t see dogs or any other creature. He was still alone in the alley.

The whining continued, sharp and persistent. It sounded as though the animals, wherever they might be, were in pain. He spotted a courtyard at the far end of the alley, with some kind of shabby warehouse building at the rear of the space. The noises seemed to come from there. Blake got to his feet and stumbled toward the building. Maybe there would be some corner that he could creep into unobserved, where he could curl up and rest.

A row of windows along the ground floor had been whitewashed to keep anybody from peering in. But one with a broken latch was slightly ajar, letting the whimpering animal sounds escape from inside. Blake pulled the window open farther, enough for him to get a look at whatever was happening.

He saw a surgical table, but not one big enough for a human being. The sheet covering it was soaked with nearly as much blood as his own tattered overcoat. Under a glaring fluorescent light, a balding figure in a red-spattered lab coat was hunched over a mongrel dog, its neck and haunches held down with leather straps. The fur and skin over the dog’s ribs had been peeled back, revealing the pulsing organs beneath. The red mess eerily resembled the wound under Blake’s overcoat.

The man in the lab coat was some kind of veterinarian, Blake figured—but not the kind that made animals better, or eased their pain. He watched as a scalpel dug around this dog’s pinkish lungs, then dropped on to the table when the veterinarian picked up a portable dictation recorder in one latex-gloved hand.

“Considerable indications of advanced pulmonary necrosis present in test subject.” Unaware of the man watching from the window behind, the vet bent down to peer into the animal’s exposed thoracic cavity. “Increase in dosage of the experimental formulation appears to have had negative effects, with likelihood of eventual fatality.…”

It was some kind of vivisection going on—Blake mulled over the scene he watched.
Must be running tests,
he figured,
for some kind of drug company
. Technically illegal but the law was never enforced, at least as long as the grisly procedures were kept out of sight in a place like this. The Dumpster at the side of the building was probably piled high with eviscerated animal corpses.

But where there was a doctor, any kind of doctor, there would be needles and suture threads. The kind with which torn, bleeding flesh could be stitched back up. He pushed himself away from the window and stumbled toward the door a few yards away.

Pounding his fist on the door took nearly the last of his strength. He had to lean his shoulder against the frame to keep from collapsing. Through the dull haze blurring his senses, he was vaguely aware of footsteps inside, heading toward him.

“What—” Opening the door, the veterinarian, still in his bloodied lab coat, raised a hand to keep Blake from toppling in on him. Revulsion showed in the upcurled corner of the vet’s mouth as he surveyed the dirty figure, red pooling on the doorstep. “Get the hell out of here!”

“Please … help…”

“This isn’t a hospital—” The vet pushed the door against Blake. “If you’re in trouble, go find an emergency room.”

“Can’t…” Wedging himself between the frame and the edge of the door, Blake rummaged in the pocket of his overcoat. “Here…” He pulled out a wad of cash. “I can pay…”

Eyes widening, the vet took the greasy bundle from the beggar’s hand. “What’s somebody like you doing with this kind of money?”

“That’s … not your business…” He could feel his head swimming, as though the last of his blood had been drained from it. “Just help me…” Digging inside the coat again, he pulled out another wad of money and pressed it into the vet’s hands. “That enough? I got more…” Another wad of bloodstained bills joined the others. “All you want … doesn’t matter…” He dug into the coat once more. “Don’t need it…”