Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel (7 page)

A small mountain of cash filled the vet’s cupped palms. He stared at the wads in amazement, then slowly nodded. “All right,” he said, holding the cash tight against the bloodied front of his coat. “I’ll get you fixed up. Come on inside.”

From seemingly miles away, the building’s door closed somewhere behind him. Blake let the veterinarian steer him down a corridor lined with filthy cages. The stick-ribbed animals they held regarded the two men with mournful resignation.

“Let’s get a look at you.” In the surgery room, the vet dragged a larger table under the fluorescent light. “Get up here.”

“I can’t…” Blake gripped the edge of the chrome table. “Can’t … make it…”

The vet got a hand under his filthy arm and strained to lift him. Blake got a knee up on the table, then rolled heavily onto his side.

“You get into a fight or something?” The vet lifted one side of the blood-soaked overcoat, then dropped it. He staggered back into the wall, startled by the raw, red flesh he had just glimpsed. “Good God—you shouldn’t even be alive—not like that!”

“Tell me … about it…”

“It’s … it’s joined to you…” The vet leaned forward, staring in mingled revulsion and amazement at what he saw. With one cautious fingertip, he prodded what seemed like an open wound running down from Blake’s chest. The vet’s eyes widened in horror as he saw the bloodied flesh respond to his touch, quivering as it pulled the coat’s wet fabric along with it. “Like … it’s all one piece. Like it’s part of you or something…”

“It is,” Blake said through gritting teeth.

“How is that
possible
?” A horrified fascination was evident in the vet’s eyes as he wiped his hand on his lab coat. “How’d you get this way?”

“Long … story…”

“It must be, I’ve seen corpses in better shape than you.” The vet recovered himself enough to be able to lift the edge of the coat once more and peer at what lay beneath. “Whatever it is … I need to get it cleaned up first.”

“No…” The matted dreadlocks dragged across Blake’s shoulders as he slowly shook his head. “Just … sew it back together…”

“But you’ll get septicemia if we don’t disinfect it—” The vet bit his own lip, hands tightening into knots. “If you haven’t got it already, that is…”

“That … won’t happen…” The beggar shook his head again. “Just … patch me up…”

“Okay, okay…,” muttered the vet. “But don’t blame me if you don’t pull through…”

Blake hissed with pain as the veterinarian stroked a wet swab, held in a pair of forceps, across the wound. “I said don’t clean it!”

“You said no disinfectant. This is just water. Or are you saying that’s out, too?”

“Can’t … Can’t clean myself with anything … Not ever. Just … sew it … please…”

The forceps clattered as the vet dropped them into a chrome tray. He drew the coat farther apart, and saw the metal military dog tags hanging around Blake’s neck. “Army, eh? Which war?”

“The army?” Blake said, confused. “Was I … I don’t know … Not anymore…” He felt the needle in the vet’s hand piercing the torn edges of his flesh. Everything in the room started to roll away from him, the space between the surgery table and the walls expanding with each labored beat of his heart. “I can’t … remember…”

*   *   *

But the memory found him in his fevered dreams.

There was a cage. That part was clear and vivid in his memory, as though he were sitting crouched in it once again, his forearms hugging his knees to his chest, the sweat trickling down his neck and into his uniform. There was a patch on his sleeve that indicated his rank—master sergeant—and another, the insignia of the twelve-man alpha team that he led. He touched the patches, as though they helped him to remember who he was.

A soldier …

There were other things—worse things—he could remember.

He was leading his alpha team on an antiterrorist sweep through an Afghan mountain range. Death was just as close then as it was in the vet’s office, but he didn’t mind that. Not as long as he was with his buddies. They were as close to family as he’d ever had. The whole team had taken a sacred oath, sealed with blood and a bottle of whiskey, to protect each other through thick and thin, and to avenge each other’s death, whenever that might come. To mess with any of Blake’s alpha team was to wind up with all of them on your sorry, soon-to-be-annihilated ass.

Blake was the point man on the Afghan sweep. But the comm link to the rest of his team fritzed out while he was separated from them in one of the winding cave systems. Then there was gunfire, and a hand-to-hand fight. A pack of insurgents attacked him from behind. Too many for him to kill alone …

An ambush
 … he realized as the butt of an insurgent’s Kalashnikov struck him in the back of the neck.
Got to warn them … Tell them it’s a trap
 …

The beatings started at the isolated farmhouse they took him to. Almost nonstop, they left him a bleeding near-corpse, slumped in the squat cage they threw him back into after every round.

“Why … don’t you just kill me?” he asked after a week of it, raising his bruised and bloodied face to them in the candlelight of the farmhouse cellar. “What’re you people waiting for?”

But the answer became obvious when he saw them set up a computer and video rig right next to his cage. They were going to execute him. Live across the Internet. As a propaganda coup in the battle for hearts and minds.

His captors left the farmhouse then; they had business elsewhere. Their leader promised Blake that they would return, sharpened knife in hand, in three days’ time. After Friday prayers.

He looked up at the skinny teenager, hardly more than a child, that they had left behind. “You got a name, kid?”

“Adeeb.” The kid didn’t appear to be more than fourteen years old or so, his arms and legs thin as matchsticks. “I’m here to keep you alive. Until the others come back to kill you.”

Blake let out a stilted laugh at the irony of it. “Where’d you learn my language?”

“My village had a school…” Adeeb spooned out a mess of rice and goat scraps, and passed the bowl through the cage’s bars. “Before we were bombed.”

“By us?”

Adeeb nodded. “My mother and father were killed. My sisters, too. The people here are the only ones I have now. Without them, I’d starve.”

Blake scooped the food into his mouth with his fingertips. “Yeah…” He nodded. “Sometimes … war just sucks.”

The kid was a kind enough jailer, and Blake found himself liking the boy more and more as the hours ticked by. In some ways, he even felt sorrier for the kid than he did for himself. Someplace else, with maybe a living mom and dad, Adeeb might’ve been just an ordinary kid, doing ordinary things. But he supposed that might have been true for a lot of people, himself included.

Sitting in a cage left him with plenty of time over the next couple of nights to get himself ready for death. That didn’t take much, since he had been expecting it for a long time even before the insurgents had captured him. As far as Blake was concerned, it pretty much came with the job, and the life—however short—that he had chosen for himself. The only thing that bothered him was Adeeb. He didn’t want the kid to have to see him die. The insurgents had left Adeeb an old M16 rifle with which to guard their captive; he slept with it, over in the corner of the room.

Something happened, though. On the third night, while he was waiting for the insurgents’ return. Crouched in his bloodstained cage, he nodded in fitful sleep, shifting between dream and waking. Sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference. That was the case when he lifted his head and gazed out through the bars. The candles guttering on the shelves and ledges suddenly glowed brighter, their narrow flames reaching like golden threads toward the ceiling. Bright as daylight, as though in his dream he had turned his open eyes toward the sun.…

“Hello, Blake.” A voice, soft and soothing, spoke aloud. “I’m here to rescue you. If you’ll accept my help.”

He brought his face close to the bars, peering at the figure of the man who had appeared before him. Elegantly dressed, a cashmere jacket visible beneath the unbuttoned overcoat. A real gentleman, with the wealthy’s easy smile and charm. It was only the misshapen, heavy-soled shoe that spoiled the man’s appearance.

“I … know you.” The thought prickled the hair along Blake’s forearms. His mind overflowed with dark memories from his life in the slums. “Or at least … I heard stories about you, back when I was a kid.” He pointed to the clubbed shoe, and the cloven hoof that was reported to be inside it. “But I didn’t believe you were real back then.”

Or maybe
 … He thought about another possibility.
Maybe this is still a dream?

“No. It’s not a dream, Blake,” the Devil said, reading his thoughts. “And luckily for you, it’s not a nightmare, either.” His clubbed shoe scraped on the ground as he approached the cage. “I’m really here. And I’m here to help.”

Blake moved his face back from the bars as far as it would go. He looked over to Adeeb, but the boy was sound asleep against the wall. “What do you mean, help?”

The Devil crouched down to face him. “Friday prayers are over, and those murderers will soon be back here to cut off your head. But if you’ll trust me, and do exactly as I say, I can get you out of this and back to your barracks.”

“To my barracks?” That brought a sudden laugh from deep inside Blake’s throat. “Do you think I’m stupid? If you’re really who I think you are, then the only reason you’re here is to steal my soul. But you won’t get it. Even if I have to die to keep it, my soul is mine.”

“You’re right, of course—” The Devil’s eyes glittered in the wavering light from the massed candles. “But you’re also wrong. I do often trick people into parting with that most precious thing inside them. And under normal circumstances, I’d love nothing more than to carry off your gleaming soul. But that’s not the reason why I’m here now. It isn’t my greed for souls that’s brought me to you, but my pride.”

“Your pride?”

“Oh, yes…” A sneer twisted a corner of the other’s mouth. “Poets have written whole books about how proud I am. So it should come as no surprise to you that I take my reputation very seriously. Ultimately, I’m here for myself tonight as much as for you.”

Blake eyed him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“Simply put, I’m here because you were born and raised in my city. I know those slums where you grew up like the back of my hand. They are
my
slums. I made them. Most of the people you grew up with serve me daily. And in return for that service, they receive protection from me, no matter where they go.”

“So, what does that have to do with me?”

“Well…” The Devil fixed him with his sulphurous eyes. “It happens to be a well-known fact in certain circles that no one is permitted to kill a child of my city without my express consent. That’s what helps to keep my people satisfied, and under my control.” He gestured contemptuously to the cage and the video equipment around it. “But this here … This flies in the face of my authority.” The Devil moved his body closer, his voice lower and more intimate. “If they were going to murder you on the quiet, Blake, I wouldn’t be bothering with you. But the fact is, these butchers aim to transmit your dying screams around the whole globe. If people back in my city learn of that, and realize that I’ve been powerless to stop one of their own brothers from being slaughtered like a pig, how do you think they’ll react?” He shook his head, appalled at the thought. “My authority over them would be weakened for years to come.”

Blake felt his gut go hollow at the mention of his slaughter. The candles’ flames wavered as a bone-chilling draft touched the air. “So you’re saying that this is somehow all to do …
with you
?”

“I’m saying that strange as it seems, our fates are linked together on this one. Which is why I need to free you.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Adeeb was still asleep in the corner, then turned back to Blake. “I need to get you out of here in one piece and back to your barracks. And in order for me to do that, I need you to trust me.” The Devil’s manicured fingers waved the objection away. “It’s hard, I know. But if you insist upon it, I even promise not to shake your hand, or offer you any other kind of contract so long as we’re together.”

As a sign of good faith, the Devil made a gesture with his hand. The rusted padlock fell from the outside of the cage to the floor. Then the manacles parted from around Blake’s wrists and ankles. He stared at them lying in the dust at his feet, then looked up as the cage’s door swung open.

“But in return…” said the Devil, “I’ll need your complete cooperation. Before it’s too late.”

Blake could almost feel the Devil’s words setting a hook in his thoughts. He glared at the open door for a moment. Then, head lowered, he pushed himself out of the cage and stood up. His spine creaked, stiff from the long days of captivity.

“All right. You win.” He rubbed the chafed skin of his wrists. “But I’m warning you. If you’re not being honest with me, I’ll—”

“Quiet—” The Devil held up a finger as he looked behind himself, up through the walls to the farmhouse’s courtyard. “They’re returning. Eleven of them. All outside.”

Blake tried to hear them, too, but couldn’t. “Should I run?”

“No—” He shook his head. “If you run, they’ll come after you. It’s safer if you fight.” The Devil pointed to the M16 propped in the corner by Adeeb. “Take the boy’s rifle. I’ll make sure he doesn’t wake up.”

Blake took the rifle and the extra ammo clip from the corner. Adeeb stirred, as though troubled by bad dreams, but his eyes didn’t open.

“There; the rear stairs.” The Devil pointed to the opposite side of the cellar. “We’ll head outside and circle around the back of them. They won’t be expecting an attack from behind.”

“But it’s too dark out there.” Blake kept his voice to a whisper. “I don’t have a scope. And if I can’t see them, I won’t be able to take them out.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be with you, and that will be enough.”

Outside, the moonless Afghan night was so dark that Blake couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He moved stealthily away from the farmhouse, then crouched down, wondering what to do next.