A Blood of Killers Read online

  “I’m not wearing that,” the boy said, poking at the robe, its rough texture scratching skin. He was careful not to push too deep and feel what was underneath.

  “You won’t have to.”

  They sat in silence for a while, and when the robed figure got up, the boy stood, too, and they walked out into the halls. Clothes were found, empty rooms, places to sleep, feed, shit and piss, clean up.

  Hours passed. Days. The boy drifted in the robed figure’s wake. They rarely spoke, and usually the exchange was sparked by a question from him, which was always answered, though often not in a way that made sense to him. After a while, he stopped asking where Painfreak came from and where was it going, whether the figure was a man or a woman, and why didn’t anyone try to throw them out. He gave up trying to figure out what he saw people do to each other, such things he’d never imagined or witnessed. Though he’d forgotten a lot, he was sure he would have remembered these particular acts.

  They spent time, a great deal of time, in a hall of mirrors, which the robed figure said was supposed to reveal appetites. The boy watched his reflection. He seemed older than he should be. And around him, clouds swirled, dark, streaked with lightning, raining blood, and they seemed to be blowing out from him, as if he was the horizon they were crossing to bring their fury.

  The boy thought he saw himself as he should be, small and thin, without a storm brewing around him, standing next to the robed figure in its reflection.

  “If you stay, you have to work,” the robed figure said one day.

  “Who’s going to tell us to leave?” the boy asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  The robed figure showed, by example, the nature of the work it could do, by walking into a room full of people, but remaining aloof, mysterious. Soon enough, a few men and women gathered around it. The figure refused to speak, and slowly walked away. Two women followed. They found a room, and allowed the boy to sit in a corner and watch as they stripped for the figure, and made love to each other, and beat one another until bruises mottled their skin, and finally wept and crawled away.

  “Did you enjoy that?” the boy asked.

  “No. That’s why it’s called work.”

  “I thought no one wanted you.”

  “Do you think it was me, beneath this cloth, that they wanted? Or was it just the question of what I might be?”

  They went back over the territory they’d already covered, only this time the figure gently pushed the boy into rooms where things were happening, with only one warning: never bite. Not even when they beg for it.

  The figure’s fingers were always cold.

  At first, he watched over the drugged, exhausted, unconscious, and the dead. He learned how to kill the dead again if they got up, or send them on to where they were needed. Then he learned how to give injections, how to cut and stitch, saw and break, to the limits of human endurance, and just a little beyond. He overcame his instinct to join in the occasional fights that exploded every now and then, and instead let them evolve, shaping the conflicts with minimal interventions so that onlookers were entertained. He studied pain, in the acts and reactions of others, discovering the moments where hesitation was required, so that pleasure might blossom, briefly, like a desert flower, before the arid duress of suffering returned.

  The first scream he personally inspired resonated with a chorus of wracked voices that rose up in his mind, as if they’d been waiting for another to join their number. But the only particular memories the scream brought back was of the man who’d touched him, and what he’d done to him.

  The thing born inside him that day wiggled as it was fed by the scream, and whined for more.

  He learned deeper arts in the craft of castration, which he recalled practicing as a way to pass time in a city, someplace long ago, for local butchers. He wrote on skin, then on organs. He learned the play of whips and sticks on flesh, then moved on to mastering the full panoply of torture instrumentation.

  There was the day he lost his virginity, which he hadn’t been aware he’d been keeping, and the day he killed to feed the thing inside him. They were the same day, with the same woman.

  On that day, the robed figure stopped pushing him into new rooms. On that day, he was given a room of his own, to shut or keep open, as he saw fit, and told he was free to bite because the poison that had protected him as a child had sunk deep into his heart, into his soul, and though his teeth were less of a threat, he was much more dangerous.

  He lost track of the robed figure, forgot about it for long periods, remembering their allegiance only when he ran across it in some of the older sections of Painfreak, where most patrons didn’t wander. He’d catch a glimpse of the figure as it floated over the bowed floors of broken-down halls, through rooms with cracked walls and falling ceilings haunted by the withered unfleshed remains of desire. The boy liked the ghosts, and studied them for inspiration. He never called out to the figure, and it always moved on, without greeting or farewell. He never saw the figure in the hall of mirrors, anymore.

  He named the thing inside him Beast, because that’s what it was and what it made him into, but he still couldn’t recall his own name, and no one ever knew him long enough to give him another.

  One day an older woman came to him, white-haired, wrinkled and sagging in her nakedness. She smelled of eucalyptus. He asked her if she wanted him to take her to his room, and she agreed, though when they entered she didn’t submit to any of the devices and instruments he had collected. Instead, she lay on the floor and asked that she join him.

  “What do you want?” he asked, puzzled, thinking she’d made a mistake in seeking him out.

  “Innocence,” she said. “Will you be my Max?”

  “Who’s he?”

  She rubbed her stomach, turned on her side and cried. “The one who wasn’t born.”

  He killed her on the floor, picking up a heavy metal manacle and smashing it into her skull until her hair was no longer white, until she had no more hair, or skull, or head, until he couldn’t see because of the splattered brain in his eyes, which still stung from the bits of shattered bone that had flown into them.

  The Beast filled his mind with its joy, and he fell asleep, blindly ecstatic.

  When he woke, the robed figure stood at the doorway to his room. “Now we’re different. Night and day. You are appetite. I am its absence. It’s time we parted.”

  “We already have,” the boy said, riding the passion of his belligerence. But the Beast didn’t rise, and the figure didn’t show fear. The boy was left angry and afraid, paralyzed.

  “No. Not until now.”

  The boy didn’t want to leave. There was danger waiting for him outside this place, that much he felt was certain. And he’d earned a position in the hierarchy of the domain in which he survived; he even had his own room.

  Only the room was suddenly cold, and the mechanisms he’d gathered in it, so familiar and comforting, turned on him, exuding menace. The danger was not outside, anymore.

  The robed figure hadn’t moved, nor revealed its face. The smells and sounds of the place, this Painfreak, remained the same. People screamed and wailed in the background, they cried out from the depths of their hungers. They whimpered and laughed. The stink of their sweat filled the air.

  The boy understood, suddenly, without thought, and surprised himself with a vision that reached beyond the immediate necessities of life. Painfreak had not changed. He had.

  He was the threat in the place he’d thought of as home. “You’re going to miss me,” he said.

  “No,” the figure replied. “I won’t.”

  The boy left, taking care not to brush the cloak’s rough fabric as he passed through the doorway.

  The sound of weeping was close behind him. He didn’t look back. Did not care. He didn’t want what he was leaving behind.

  He wandered the halls and rooms and great galleries of Painfreak, but this time with a purpose. He followed well-dressed men and wome
n, those who wore styles of clothing he was familiar with, that reminded him of long ago, until he found a room with walls of marbled rose walls trimmed in gold and a polished black floor, lit by brilliant chandeliers hanging over a long table full to overflowing with food. Men and women danced slowly to gentle music, laughed, and whispered.

  The hairs at the back of his neck rose. He waited in a corner for someone to approach him, to say, “Little boy, I’ll make sure you’re safe.” But no one did, and after a while he didn’t want to kill everyone in the room, and his heart had stopped beating fast, and the Beast quieted, though it was still hungry, and disappointed in its host’s reticence.

  The coldness of his old room lingered at the base of his spine. He knew better than to fight to stay in a place he wasn’t wanted, or satisfy any gnawing needs for revenge. Especially when that place was so much larger than anything he would ever become.

  And there was gratitude, scattered like petals before a procession, for everything he’d learned and received.

  The boy tracked people appearing and disappearing magically through a doorway, and followed.

  He walked down a hallway, from light to darkness, avoiding others, but nearly tripping over a boy, stinking and filthy, barely more than skin and bones, crawling at his feet.

  Until a stench, both shocking and familiar, made him stop. He looked for the pits that could be found in Painfreak, in which some liked to bathe in, and which he’d avoided. He found instead a doorway looking out on a bustling crowd set off beyond a row of columns. The smell blew in from that open doorway, along with the sound of train whistles and the murmur of a crowd.

  He went through, and a man emerged from shadow behind the columns, along with a beggar, a man in uniform, and a fourth who used his umbrella as a crutch as he limped out. The first tall, thin sliver of bone and muscle, bleeding from an arm and the top of his head, came closer, stepping over three bodies. A chill breeze seemed to gust from him.

  Before anyone could speak, a small, Asian man with his eyes hidden by sunglasses appeared from the darkest shadows by the door, grabbed the boy’s hand, and pressed a cold, metal bar against the skin between a thumb and forefinger. Behind the Asian man stood his tall, wide companion, eyes also masked. The sheen of their sweat reflected what little light there was in the alcove. Both wore the slightest of smiles.

  “The price was paid,” the Asian man said, addressing the boy. “Thank you. A pleasure serving you. Come again.” He pulled the metal rod away, and the pair backed off.

  The boy didn’t see where they went because he realized he’d been looking down on the man, rather than up at him, and that felt wrong. Then he felt something else entirely. A knife coming his way. He moved just enough to let if fly by his head.

  The beggar and the uniform were on him. He blocked a kick, turned a blow, swept one of his assailants off of his feet and grabbed the head of the other with both hands, lifting the chin and turning the head in one smooth, swift motion, pushing through resistance, snapping the neck. He stomped the fallen attacker in the groin, and again in the neck. The Beast raised its voice, demanding more.

  “What goes on in there?” the tall, cold man asked, eyes narrowed, gaze slipping to the doorway while his last companion limped hurriedly away.

  “Whatever people want to happen,” the boy answered.

  “I don’t want any trouble from you. I’m looking for the boy who just went in.”

  He almost said, I’m a boy, too. But then he remembered a name: Shishir. A place: Calcutta. A time: now.

  Time is always now.

  He looked at his hands, at Shishir, at the bodies on the ground. Realized what he’d done. He wasn’t a boy, anymore. But he was back in the place he’d left a lifetime ago, running from danger.

  He grunted, as if taking a blow to the gut.

  The Beast howled.

  He gave the Beast his voice, and paused an instant to watch Shishir’s eyes grow wider. Someone looked in from beyond the columns.

  He moved, fast, anticipating the knife, shifting his hips as he closed, letting the weapon slide in the empty space between elbow and rib. He locked the wrist against his body with the elbow, spun, got low, turned a hip. Bone snapped. A startled cry ended abruptly as Shishir slammed against the hard floor.

  He took his time choking the life out of the man, squeezing his fingers together slowly, savoring every raspy gasp for air, the fluttering lips, the spittle, the flapping tongue, the body, a wire of muscle, squirming under him. He was surprised by how well the lessons he’d learned about pain translated to fighting.

  The Beast wanted more, but he was done with Shishir, and he knew where there was more to feed on.

  He went through the train station, the years and life he’d spent in Painfreak falling away, vanishing like mist and dreams in the dawn. The name, like the mark, remained, a shadow across his memories, a mountain forever veiled by mist.

  He walked. Slowly. It seemed important for him to take his time, to be slow and deliberate. Not to rush.

  Or run.

  On his way back to the place rage told him he had to visit, he stopped in front of a mirror in a shop window and studied his reflection. His face was smooth, young, attractive in a fierce, masculine kind of way, beneath straight, black hair. A strong pair of shoulders and a stout neck didn’t divulge all of his strength. He looked fit, though he’d have to change his clothes and wash up. There was still blood on his face and shirt from the old woman, the one from his dream. He shook his head, laughed. Dreams didn’t bleed. It had to have been from Shishir, or one of his men.

  He wasn’t dressed quite like everyone else on the streets. The pants, shoes and shirt were all of a different shade of familiar colors, cut and styled in a fashion that made many turn and stare at him. He couldn’t remember where he’d picked the outfit up, but resolved to find more subtle furnishings when he was done.

  After the blood.

  A man tried to stop him at the first floor entry. He bit the guard, on the chin, then the cheek, following up quickly with tearing rakes to the nose, ears and cheek, before ending at the throat. He’d expected the man to die at his first bite, but when that didn’t happen, he let himself go and the Beast joyously followed. The Beast had him linger over the throat, nibbling at the edges of the ragged hole in the flesh like he was giving a lover pleasure. He knew he should rush up the stairs because the man’s initial screams, and sounds of the struggle, had warned the one he wanted. But what was done was done. The Beast needed its reward.

  When he climbed the stairs, he was slow and deliberate, listening and watching for an ambush. He kicked the third floor door in. Jolly was on him before he could step through the office entrance.

  The gun went off as soon as he’d deflected Jolly’s hand. The man would have been better off waiting behind his desk. But, like the Beast, he liked to do his work at close quarters. He appreciated intimacy. That was another reason he’d so loved the boy whose bite could kill.

  The gun flew down the stairwell with a lock of elbow and wrist, and a wrench. Using leverage, and a quick pivot, he threw Jolly back into the room, stumbling to the front of his desk.

  He caught Jolly as he was opening a top drawer, where another gun rested. He grabbed Jolly from behind, by the balls, and pulled him away. He squeezed, and the man doubled over, collapsed his knees, rolled over on his side. Without letting go, he lay down next to Jolly and whispered in his ear, “I’ve blossomed.” He almost laughed, surprising himself with what he’d said.

  “What?” Jolly said. “Who?”

  He opened his mouth to give his name, but couldn’t remember. He knew it had something to do with blossoming, with flowers, but the word wouldn’t come.

  Shishir was the first name that came to him, but not enough time had passed since that name had been attached to someone living. Another came to him, from the lips of someone he’d killed. Or dreamed he killed. Just before Shishir.

  He couldn’t remember who she’d been, or why he’
d been with her. But a dead woman naming him felt right, for whatever reason she’d had to to do.

  “Max,” he said.

  “Who?” Jolly asked again.

  He understood Jolly was demanding to know who’d sent an assassin to kill him. “Max,” he said, again. He eased the pressure on Jolly’s balls, grabbed and locked a wrist, got up and pinned the man’s head to the floor with a knee and the weight of his body.

  Jolly’s eyes lolled, like a cow’s he’d seen die once when hit by a truck as it wandered Calcutta’s streets. “Familiar,” he said, the word sounded more like a croak.

  “Just another bud that’s bloomed, in its time.” Again, the words felt right. He could tell by the eyes that Jolly didn’t understand, either, but after a few moments, Jolly’s eyes grew wider, as if just his voice carried a latent power to frighten, and he was pleased.

  The Beast wanted blood, but Max sensed this man deserved something more: a deeper taste of the things he knew how to do. He broke the wrist he was holding, then the elbow, and finally separated the shoulder for that arm. Jolly’s screams carried over Calcutta’s din, but no one came to investigate. The body downstairs must have served as a warning.

  Max worked on the other arm, then the ribs, one by one, snapping each, puncturing the lung so that Jolly was forced to cough up blood between weakening gasps for air and fading cries. The Beast drank the pain, discovering a form of pleasure that did not rely on gore. It fed on Jolly’s sweat, on the sounds rising through his throat, and from inside of him. The Beast savored his convulsions and shudders as Max applied pressure to a hip joint and a knee. When Max paused, to give Jolly the strength to beg, to offer meaningless information on his rivals and allies, to promise wealth and power, the Beast anticipated the crushing despair that would come when Max tired of words and resumed the breaking.

  Max worked through the day and into the night, past Jolly falling into silence, shock and numbness, even his inability to be revived. He practiced on the internal organs, without breaking skin, because the skills came easily, as if he’d employed them often after learning from masters. But the time came when the Beast lay dormant within him, satisfied, slumbering, dreaming its dreams of horror, and Max was bored by the lack of any reciprocity from his victim. So he severed the last thread connecting Jolly to life, putting his hand over nose and mouth to suffocate him, and let the body fall to the floor.