The Soul Consortium (6 page)

“Was that you I saw last night running from this house?” I knew it was.

“Of course.” His gaze moved to my gun.

I tucked it back into my pocket. “Why? Who are you?”

He folded the document he had picked up from under the bed and offered it to me. “I am Keitus Vieta.”

I took the paper from him, stuffed it into my pocket next to the gun, and looked at the old man’s hand. It was still extended, the skeletal fingers open, steady, seemingly waiting for a handshake. I refused, and he lowered it to greet his other hand that held his cane. He forced his smile a little wider across sharp cheekbones.

“Should I know you?” I asked.

“No.”

I tried to regulate my breathing to hide the quiver in my voice. “Then why should you know me?”

Keitus Vieta set his cane on the bed and sniffed the air in long slow gulps, fingers raised, playing with the air around him as he stalked the room. Fairy tales about ogres scenting the blood of hiding children crept into my mind as I watched. It was at that moment of scrutiny I realized something about this man was utterly wrong; primal instincts had roused something in my mind, warning me he could not be real, and I struggled to rationalize what my senses could not.

He crouched over a mug of cold coffee left on the bedside table, picked it up as if it were a wounded starling, then pressed it to his cheek. I could only stand and watch in frozen fascination as he rolled his tongue over the handle, across the lip, and around the base, his gaze upon me as the cold dregs pattered onto the carpet like blood.

“Mine,” he whispered.

Resisting the creeping fear, I grappled with the facts before me. Persuaded by an unknown motive, Keitus Vieta had visited the scene of my crime, and amongst his bizarre intentions, he wanted to conceal my mistakes, wanted to protect me for some reason. This man, whoever he was, wherever he was from, needed me. I had no idea why, but for now, all I needed to remember was that his need must be my advantage.

“What did you do to the police outside? You must know they will be looking for you after tonight,” I said. “Are they drugged?”

Keitus placed the mug within the folds of his coat. “Not drugged.”

“What then?”

“Empty now.”

“What does that mean?”

“Too many questions. Be content with the knowledge that I am here to help you.”

“But why? Did you have something against Kriefan Mack?”

Keitus placed his index finger against his tongue and rubbed the saliva against his thumb as if testing something. “You help me. So I help you.”

I squeezed the gun inside my pocket, fighting an urge to rip it out and level it against his forehead again, scream at this strange man, and demand he start making sense. He saw the twitch of my hand in my pocket, and the feeling of cold dread visited me once more.

He smiled, perhaps believing I would not be intimidated.

On impulse I wrenched the gun out as his eyes widened in excitement. Sweat coated my palm, my heart thumped inside my throat, and as if from within a dream, I actually heard myself whimpering when I pressed my weapon against the old man’s forehead once more.

We stayed in that pose for the longest time—my fear mingling with his fascination—until at last Keitus wrapped his frail fingers around the barrel and freed the gun from my trembling hand. As he had with the empty mug, he slid his tongue across the metal, tasting the handle, the orifice at the end of the barrel, the trigger, then passed it back. “No, not ready yet. Not at all ready.”

I let my arm go limp, almost dropping the gun. “What isn’t ready? What do you mean? Please.”

“I am a collector.”

“Of guns?” I knew he meant something else, something more sinister. My legs began to shake.

“Of … life. And death. Your gun is not ready yet. You still have a little time. More people to kill. More gifts to bring me before our partnership ends.”

I shuddered, leaned over him in spite of my growing weakness, a vain attempt at intimidation. “Our partnership is over tonight. You might need me, old man, but I don’t need you.”

“You have always needed me.”

“Bullshit.”

He retrieved his cane from the bed. The stone seemed a little brighter than earlier. “Remember Graham Adams? I was there.”

I felt my heart stop, waiting for him to tell me more.

“You told everyone that his foot had been trapped in the pond and that you tried to save him, remember? Who do you think pushed his ankle through the bars of the trolley they found when they dragged his corpse from the water? Did you think you were lucky? That fortune fell in love with you that day? Was it then you began to believe that Fate had plans for your future?”

I dropped the gun. Felt the room spin like a cloudy carousel, felt clammy panic siphon my waking thoughts.

“I’ll take you home.”

I remember weeping as his gaze cut into me like a scalpel dissecting my soul. Then I sank to my knees, drowning in a cold nightmare.

I
woke the next day and chased away the harsh dreams with a comparatively stiff drink and a cigarette. I usually saved that pleasure for quiet evenings in, but I needed something more than coffee to pacify my mind. Vieta’s haunting voice and face had invaded my sleep, and I still could not rationalize what I had seen in that house. This was more than fear. It was something deeper, something far more profound than an emotional reaction.

I remembered my youth, my fascination when taught about the blind spot of the human eye. At the point where the optic nerve sprouts from the back of the eyeball, the brain receives no visual information and fills in the gaps with a fabrication of its own. With one eye shut, a single black dot on a piece of paper could be made to disappear if held at the right distance; the eye could not see the dot, and the mind would fill the void with its best approximation—the surrounding paper. To me Keitus Vieta was the same thing: a fabrication of the brain to explain something that should not be there, a paradox, a tangible ghost, something unreal. Yet he was there. He
was
real.

I needed to shut him out of my waking thoughts if I wanted to make it through the day with my composure intact, so I walked into town, my coat drawn about me like a vampire’s cloak, stalking from pavement to pavement, road to alley, alley to street. It didn’t matter to me that my choice of clothes and miserable scowl on such a bright morning could draw unwanted attention. I wanted to hide, though, withdraw for a time until I could better understand what happened last night, but no inner peace would be mine until I’d discovered what the local reporters had squeezed out of the police. It was the same in most of the towns and cities I moved to: they’d splash the news across the front of the local tabloid like blood from a Shakespearean tragedy.

I could usually predict what the local papers would say. A day or two after my kill, I would buy one for the purpose of amusement and to scope out any notable stories about people who had narrowly evaded death. But today was different—today I needed to know, because last night was all wrong. Control had been lost. And it still evaded me. More than ever I felt alien eyes calculating my every move, and now I had to accept the truth: it was no longer a paranoia to be dismissed out of hand. The eyes are real. And my stalker even has a name. Had Fate disowned me? Had she sacrificed me to this new stranger’s will? I expected punishment for my carelessness, but this? Abandonment could destroy me. I need her. I need her like a child needs his—

My shoulder glances off another’s.

“Hey, watch it, mate!”

“Leave it, Bill.
Please
don’t start.”

I turn, look at the couple holding hands. The man stares at me as if ready to prove his prowess to the woman at his side. A flash of rage ignites deep in my stomach, and I chew my lower lip to suppress the rising urge to make an example of him and spread the insolent fucker’s brains over his girlfriend’s flayed corpse.

He backs away, stepping on his girlfriend’s foot—must have read that thought on my face.

I suck back an audible, measured, long, steady, soothing breath … as if I am about to blow the two of them into the road, spattering them into oncoming traffic where their guts will …

Don’t!
I know what’s happening. I see it. Impulsive violence is a poor tool. Like a sledgehammer in oily hands it can destroy much, but it rarely hits the nail.

He’s still looking at me, sizing me up with no idea in that apelike brain how close he just came to his end. Interesting. Did he just cheat Fate?

A one-sided smile slides across the man’s face as he lifts his palms. “Women! Lucky for you she’s the one in control, eh?”

My eyes widen as I move toward him. “What?”

His smile loses place to confused suspicion. “What d’you mean …
what?
Listen, mate—”

“Bill, leave him. He’s a bloody weirdo.” She yanks his arm, and the man shakes his head as he’s pulled back onto the path.

He was right.
She’s
in control. I go through one night of doubt, and I almost lose myself. I should know better than to think she would abandon me after just one night of failure. No, like Jesus in the wilderness, this is my test, but I won’t take forty days to learn my lesson. I’ll trust her. Whoever this Keitus Vieta is, she must control him too, and if he wants to help me, so be it.

A
pril 5: Liam Butler. Fell from someone’s roof trying to replace some broken slates, landed on the pavement, and smashed his pelvis. His head missed the edge of his wheelbarrow by the width of a finger. He should’ve died.

After reading about it in the local paper the following week, I made sure the job was finished, though there was nothing in the man’s eyes that yielded any of the Grim Reaper’s secrets. The hospital staff were clueless about my unauthorized presence on the ward at night when I administered the drug, and they had even less idea about why Mr. Butler didn’t make it through after such a standard operation. Their only notable comment was about the strange old man who, claiming to be a relative, turned up only an hour after the death had been declared. Police could not locate him after the visit, and none of Mr. Butler’s other relatives were able to conclude who it could have been. It was also noted that the deceased’s reading glasses had mysteriously disappeared from his bedside.

June 23: Vanessa Fullworth. Fell asleep at the wheel of her car. She smashed through the central reservation, taking with her the front bumper of a transit van as her metal tomb slammed her into two other cars. Except she didn’t die. At least not until I found out about her miraculous escape. Another hospital visit set things straight. Again the mysterious visitor. Again a missing object.

September 12: Steve Warren. A local electrician found unconscious in his workshop after electrocuting himself repairing an old TV set. An ambulance found him quite by chance, having arrived to deal with injured people at a pub brawl at the end of the road. One of Mr. Warren’s customers, irritated by the inconvenience of the shop still being closed well after lunchtime, had peered through the back window and seen him slumped over his bench. Had the ambulance and its capable paramedics not been there at the time, Mr. Warren would have died—or so I was led to believe by the owner of the shop next door.

I called on Mr. Warren’s services as soon as he was back to work, claiming I needed an expert to examine a faulty circuit breaker. Nobody ever found out what happened to him, and I saw nothing new in his dying eyes, either. The following day somebody broke into my home while I was out. The lock had not been forced, and nothing had been stolen, but the spots of blood coughed up by Mr. Warren onto my carpet had been cleaned off in my absence.

September 18: Ibrahim Yelsin. This was the incident that led to the discovery of Steve Warren. Ibrahim was the victim of a racial attack outside the Golden Lion pub, and it was the landlord who had called the police and the ambulance. The unfortunate teenager had been stabbed in the chest, and it was a miracle the blade missed his vital organs.

Finding this boy was not difficult, he was well known in the area, but my inquiries had brought with them considerable danger—once Ibrahim’s murder had been made public, my own discovery would be simple. A test then. How would Mr. Vieta cover my tracks this time? The newspapers were kind enough to reveal the answer with a two-page spread. All the boy’s friends, any witnesses to my involvement, were no longer able to speak. Attempts to discuss the demise of their friend resulted in prolonged episodes of mute panic and tearful hysteria. I chose not to investigate further.

December 1: Jane Laughday. Survivor of a laboratory explosion.

December 12: Jamie Colson. Remission from prostate cancer.

February 14: Troy Davenport. Failed suicide attempt.

March 3: Alfie Bennet. Sole survivor of a food poisoning scandal.

May 29: Lisa Barclay. Thrown from a fairground ride.

June 8: Tim Sweetman. Lived through an aneurysm.

Died a few days later after a second aneurysm … with a little help from a certain cocktail of drugs, of course.

The list went on. Each time I found out about people who had cheated my goddess I was there to ensure they paid their debt. And no matter how many times I tested Mr. Vieta’s ability to clean up my murderous mistakes, he would always be there, waiting.

The entire nation, consumed by fascination, had labeled me the Magpie Killer. One particularly resourceful detective inspector noticed that all my victims had lost a personal item they had been using close to the time of death. The motive was unknown, but the discovery earned the inspector a commendation, a sizable reward, and a sudden brain seizure, for which I am quite sure was the handiwork of my creeping shadow, Keitus Vieta. The only communication the psychoanalysts could get from the inspector was a stream of letters scrawled in block capitals:
HEISNOWHERE.
And they were always followed by a long scream of terror that could only be silenced with morphine.