City Of Ruin (39 page)

JC recovered. He and Duka finished off their opponents in less than a minute, working similar moves: arms pulled forward, punches to the torso, then one to the neck, a blade in the back of the knee to ensure the opponent wouldn’t walk again. JC and Duka left the others alive, but barely able to speak.

The reactions of the Lord Cromis men were inert and inexact. There were breathless moments when Malum thought the garuda herself would intervene, but she remained languid, and he waited for her to move.

The garuda shook off her coat, cast it aside, stood up tall and spread her broken wings. Her brown plumage was speckled with white. Malum called his men aside, as was etiquette, and she descended upon him like he was her personal prey.

As his fangs grew prominent, her talons ripped left then right across his surtout, golden coins falling softly on to the snow. Rage surged, something within him taking control. She leaped onto him, her wings juddering. He rolled aside then kicked her away. JC made to throw his knife, but Malum waved him off impatiently; he always had to prove his value. As she lay on her side, he stuck a boot into her back where the wings joined. Her painful screech rattled the chilly air.

She lashed out with an arm, but he was too quick, lurched backwards, forwards and managed to bite into her. Another deafening screech and she shook her bitten arm free. Then, as she regained her footing, he slammed his boot into the side of her knee, buckling her askew on a broken leg. She lay on her back as he ripped his messer through her chest, blood pooling on the snow. Her thick beak opened, but there was only silence.

She was still alive and still in pain, as he bit into her wounds and ripped chunks of offal from her chest cavity, unable to control the monster within him. The garuda shuddered and spasmed, then stilled. Finally, he stopped. A thick trail of gore dripped down his mouth as the intensity of the moment ebbed away.

He climbed off her, collected his scattered coins and began to wipe the remains of the leader of the Lord Cromis gang from his face. As was the tribal way, he grabbed a lump of flesh from inside her and shook it at the two surviving men, who huddled against the wall, terrified. ‘See this, you fucks!’ Malum shouted. ‘Don’t interfere with us, understand?’ He flung the remnants at them and marched away to rejoin JC and Duka, who were both busy nursing their injuries.

Malum ordered, ‘Give me a hand with this. And JC – sort out your fucking drinking. You’re slow. You’ll not always have me to cover your back.’

The Bloods wrapped up the carcass in her own clothing. JC dragged it through the thick snow to the back door of the abattoir. Malum knocked several times.

Voland answered eventually with a startled expression. ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said, noting the bird-woman.

Malum nodded in greeting. ‘Here’s another body. You want it?’

‘Er, grand, grand.’ Voland rubbed the back of his head in confusion, and stepped to one side, gesturing towards the darkness. ‘Can you take her in and leave her over in the corner? The new stock is all ready for you to collect.’

‘Nice one.’ At least he knew now that Voland’s sources were as despicable as he’d guessed. Malum turned awkwardly and smiled at his men, who were now muttering in bemusement. ‘What, I’m going to ask for some coin for her, all right? Money’s money, after all. That’s what this city’s all about.’

Duka chuckled as JC lumbered inside under the garuda corpse, nearly dropping his mask. A black cat scampered out through the doorway and padded into the street. Feathers scraped against the doorway, fell loose, were blown out into the snow, where the cat went skipping after them.

*

Well, that was strange
. . .

From a safe distance, Jeryd had watched the garuda get taken out by the masked men. The black cat sauntered up to him, a stray feather in its jaws, and regarded him as if it could perceive his thoughts. Jeryd leant down to scratch the creature’s head, which it permitted before losing interest in him entirely.

Jeryd regarded the closed door. He knew better by now than to get involved in the affairs of gangs without any backup. Many an Inquisition officer had been eradicated while misinterpreting folly for bravery. Because he’d been overworked and feeling stressed, it was several days since Malum had provided him with this address, a bleak and featureless building in a district full of the like, and he still wasn’t sure what he might discover from this Voland character – though the incident in the Peep Show had left him utterly haunted.

Further along, some street beggars hunched under a doorway, warming their hands over a small pit-fire, laughing and exchanging extreme comments. One of them hurled a racist obscenity at him, so he moved along the grubby street, not wanting to create a scene. A group of kids were playing around a patch of ice, slip-sliding in sudden horizontal lurches.

So, what did any of this activity have to do with dodgy meat? He shouldn’t have been here anyway. Investigating food was not what the Inquisition paid him for. He should have been investigating the murders, looking into the mystery that was taking people from the streets. But curiosity was getting the better of him. Besides, he worked harder than any of his colleagues back in the Inquisition – so he was entitled to a bit of free time.

Walking back to the building, he scrutinized its brickwork. On the black metal door was scratched some graffiti.

Nice
, Jeryd thought bitterly, particularly unimpressed by the misplaced apostrophe.

He put his ear to the door but heard nothing beyond. He moved along the side of the building, around the corner on to a busier thoroughfare where skinny horses trailed carts full of mouldy vegetables. A trilobite carrying tools stood patiently between a couple of labourers working on a collapsed wall adjoining one of the most questionable-looking taverns Jeryd had ever seen. It was called Knights of Villiren, and seemed in worse condition than even the Garuda’s Head back in Villjamur. Jeryd checked along the rear of the abattoir, but located no other means of entry.

He returned to the corner, and lingered there, glancing back at the only door. After a few moments there was a clang as it opened, and out stepped the gang members, counting coins in their hands. Laughing in satisfaction, they vanished past the beggars, who couldn’t look them in the eye. Even the kids took to their heels.

Jeryd strolled tentatively towards the open door, hoping to steal a glance at what might be inside. Suddenly he slipped on an ice patch and cursed, ‘Bollocks’. He fell on his arse and skidded several feet, before clattering into a wall.

On turning over on the ground he found Nanzi staring down at him. A gust of wind struck the scene, sending litter cascading along the street, and he noticed, under the hem of her long flapping skirt, that her legs seemed abnormally . . . hairy.

‘Investigator Jeryd, what are you doing here?’ she demanded, pressing down her skirt against the breeze.

‘Making a tit of myself, currently,’ he grumbled, as he clambered to his feet, brushing himself down. His rump hurt after that tumble, and now his hands were bloody freezing.
What the hell’s wrong with this
girl’s legs? Has she had a brush with some incompetent cultist?

‘I mean,’ she said, ‘what are you doing out this way?’

‘I got lost. I was looking for the address given to me by Malum.’

‘Do you want me to help you? You’ve not told me much about this particular case.’

He blew warm air into his cupped hands, unable to stop thinking about her legs. ‘What’re you doing out here yourself?’

‘I pass along here on my way to work, and was just heading there now. Are you going to the office too?’

‘I can always check that joint some other time,’ he said. ‘I know vaguely where it is now, at least. Come on, let’s get back to HQ. There are probably a whole load of reports to read through, and it’s not as though anyone else is going to deal with them.’

*

Later that night Nanzi and Voland made love again in the tenderest of ways. She needed this release after a stressful day at work. There had been an assault involving a beautiful young woman, and Nanzi had spent most of the afternoon calming her down and taking the details. None of the others in the Inquisition seemed to realize how traumatic the experience must have been to the girl.

It was so difficult for her to balance helping the community during the day, with helping Voland at night in her alternative guise. Day and night, she barely ever stopped helping people out. But Voland had rebuilt her and she felt in debt to him – time working for him was important. Certainly it helped that he was a perfect gentleman. On the other hand she also loved working for the Inquisition. That was a job in which she could feel herself a woman who had achieved something. Though it was a male-dominated profession, her efforts over the last couple of years had seen her reach the lofty position of investigator aide. Jeryd was charming enough, if a bit slow – and would he ever stop eating? She found him vaguely endearing, but he was now becoming too much of a risk, and so, lying there semi-naked, she told her lover about her fears.

Voland smoked a cigarillo as he contemplated her problem. ‘You wish to be rid of him now?’

‘I can’t be sure,’ she said. ‘I really just don’t know. He is such a bumbler at times – and not a
particularly
good investigator – but he tries hard, and I do learn from him.’

‘Perhaps it may be best for both our sakes to dispose of him.’

Nanzi said nothing, but Voland guessed that she wasn’t keen. ‘We could both be arrested and executed. There is no overly useful information coming from the commander of the Night Guard. I say it’s time we rid ourselves of this Investigator Jeryd.’

She nodded and laid her head on Voland’s chest. She then drew one of her spider limbs across his pink human leg, smiling softly at the contrast in colour and texture. It pained her to even think of it – has she had grown attached to the old rumel. He was a nice person – a good person – but one thing that Voland had taught her was practicality. Emotions could ravage her, in her human state, so that her logical thinking suffered. As a spider, the deed should be more simple. Her animal instincts would take over, and it would become a job, just like any other. Sometimes she wished she could always enjoy the strength of will of her transformed state – with no weakness of purpose, no reliance on others.

‘OK. I’ll kill him. I’ll have to do it soon, though.’

‘A golem show!’ Marysa exclaimed. Her expression of joy was worth a thousand times the effort needed to get the tickets. She held his hands in hers, and somehow managed to shake the day from him, the way she always did.

‘Yeah.’ Jeryd was a little coy, for some reason. He wasn’t the greatest romantic in the world and he knew it. No matter how old he became, he reacted just the same as when he was a kid doing this sort of thing for the first time. It was such an awkward business. ‘I thought we could do with getting out, and I know how much you liked them back in Villjamur. So you’d better throw some fancy rags on, because the Great Iucounu starts in an hour or so.’

‘Great, I’ll go and change quickly.’

‘Hurry now, or I’m going without you.’ Jeryd contentedly watched her rush out of the room: surprising his partner was one of his great pleasures. As he listened to the familiar sounds of her getting ready, he sighed contentedly, and turned to look out of the window. It was snowing – no surprise there – but at least the street cleaners had left their path to the theatre fairly unobstructed. There was snow still along the tops of walls, or gathering on rooftops, places where the cultists couldn’t easily do their work. To Villiren, snow was still a soft white plague. Storm lanterns hung at street intersections, their soft orange glow caught in the glistening cobbles. A part of him considered that tonight might even qualify as romantic.

To be honest he needed a night of escape like this, for his own sanity. Otherwise, thoughts of the improbable spider killer dominated his mindspace. The case took up his entire day, from questioning relatives about the disappearance of a loved one, to piecing together individual incidents in the hope of establishing a general pattern. And on top of that, as always, was the bloody administration. He wondered what the Inquisition would be like if it wasn’t for paperwork.

Could he even match the wits and abilities of this spider, a being so unlike him, something so abnormal that it managed to resuscitate his worst childhood fears? No one else in the Inquisition seemed to care about the case. He had had words about his suspicions with one or two of the senior officers, but he could tell from their expressions that they would be leaving him to deal with it alone. And that was fine – he was used to taking the weight of the world on his shoulders without thanks, but it made for a stressful existence. One of the guys at work had kindly bought him a bottle of whisky, said he’d been working too late and would soon appreciate its company. He merely left it unopened in his bottom drawer, because that was a dangerous road ahead.

Eventually Marysa came downstairs and bounded into the living room, just like old times. A blink of the eye and they might have been kids again –
where did all that time go?
She wore her classic-fit green gown, with the brooch he’d bought her fifty years back, presented to her on one of the bridges of Villjamur as an anniversary present. Her white hair was tied back elegantly and she wore his favourite perfume.