First stop in my pursuit: the dead house. Or morgue, as some more refined folks have come to calling them. Most towns don’t have them, but a city as big as Crescent needs to. Sad truth about the world—a denser population means more bodies, and somebody’s gotta sort them before the grave takes them and the priest whispers, “Amen.”
Deep down, humanity is just on one long race to the end. Somewhere inside, no matter how happy a person is, we’re all just waiting for the sweet release of death. Question is, will we even know when it’s come? As someone who bit the proverbial bullet, I can say with assurance I’ve got no idea what happened during those years I spent on the other side. First thing I remembered after Ace’s cold eyes and bullet was staring into Shargrafein’s wispy form.
Trumpets blared, dragging me back to the present. Hadn’t realized how far I’d walked until a funeral precession nearly trampled me. A few dozen people marched by on their way to the ceremony, celebrating a life. Women in garish gowns, men dressed to the tees, wearing colorful masks—a custom not used elsewhere in the world. Can’t say I minded. Why does death have to be so morose? What I’ve come to learn in my service to the White Throne is that life is a flicker.
You don’t cry before you blow out a birthday candle.
They took a seldom-used route to the Cathedral, avoiding the obstreperous crowds gathered to celebrate life by different means. It was getting late, but for this time of year, the party had just begun. I halted at the corner of the Avenue of the Holy Cross and waited. It wasn’t long before the mortician exited his humble building beside the graveyard and closed up shop.
He checked his pocket watch, then proceeded toward the partying. Couldn’t blame him. After what he likely saw all day, something as mindless as throwing back a few and dancing the night away seemed a small comfort.
The morgue was attached to a sheriff’s building—a two-story affair I guessed contained a fair number of lockups. I paused at the door around back, checking both ways. Nobody paid me the slightest heed. Why would they? Dead men don’t got pockets. Anything inside had been picked clean of valuables long before they were brought in by street rats or peckish deputies.
Made sense the only defense was a locked wooden door. My old life as an outlaw afforded me certain skills, one of which was picking a lock as simple as this one. The tumblers clicked, and I was in. I gently shut the door behind me and re-locked it. Easiest B-and-E I could recall in some time.
I said there was nothing to steal from the cold, naked dead, but that ain’t entirely true. The dead… they talk to me, show me their memories. Don’t mean to, of course. How much easier would it be if bones started rattling off secrets, saving me the trouble of looking? But if older vampires were amidst and catching enough heat for Shar to care, perhaps one of the bodies below had been a meal like that fella in the alley.
A set of stairs descended into a basement, and I stopped at the bottom. Moonlight crept in through narrow, grated windows up near the far ceiling. Twelve tables were arrayed in rows down the stark room, each covered by a cloth. I knew it was chilly as Hell in there without even needing to feel it. Something about the way the cold makes fabric stiffen. Or maybe it was the feet sticking out, skin white as marble.
I considered touching one as I passed the first, but instead, continued on to their upper body and peeled the cover down to just below the neck. Considering it was a young woman, I dared not go farther.
Say what you will about James Crowley, but he’s a gentleman.
I whispered my usual Latin prayer and stretched my hand over her face.
“A tenebris ad lucem.” Means something like From darkness to light.
Though I served angels, I never did quite get used to this part. Felt worse than grave robbing, and I’ll admit I’d plucked a few things here and there off corpses, like cash to pay for silver. They wouldn’t miss it.
It was one thing to accidentally stumble upon the remains of a hanged man, but Divining the dead in a row like this felt so… clinical. Invasive.
Skin touched skin, and my head lurched back…
* * *
Waves crashed. It was dark. Only moonlight to show the feet beneath me—my feet. They were completely bare, balanced at the edge of a building on the wharf. Wind whistled, whipping a sheer white nightdress with a red stain around her thigh region. Cold, even though the humidity or stress had the body sweating.
An odd sensation. A rare one. Something I’d forgotten about.
I filtered through thoughts of loss and sorrow but soon came calm. Intense, demystifying calm. No worry about what came next or what the fall might feel like. Just acceptance.
As I inhabit these flitting memories of death, I rarely do more than observe. But this time, I strained mentally against the movement of her legs to no avail. For the tears on her cheeks were dry, and her decisions were made.
A child lost. A broken heart. And a few steps later, a plunge into the icy depths of the gulf. Water flooded her throat, and panic came all too late, as it always does. The will to survive is a primal thing.
The water didn’t kill her, even as it choked and filled her lungs. The heavy current tossed her body, and under the water where not a soul could see or help, her head—my head—cracked against a rock.
* * *
I snapped out of the vision, hacking up seawater that never came. It took me a few moments to compose myself, then another as I reached for the phantom pain where her head struck.
I leaned over the table, breathing slowly, still feeling like that girl. I can take death and brutality, but usually, it’s got a purpose. A fight. A murder. This was… well, a first.
“You save me and not her?” I beseeched the moldy ceiling.
All those dark days when I doubted this unlife of mine and wished it would come to an end, now I felt like a damned fool. How lucky I was to get to wish that, all while complaining about my holy mission—while this poor girl lay here, a barren womb and a dead, broken heart.
I couldn’t help but think of Rosa losing her husband and that maybe I’d been too harsh on her.
I never had anyone I’d cared for much. Which meant I’d never had anyone to lose who’d break me so. Is that despair what Rosa fought against every day? And it wasn’t the agony of loss or terror of dying that got me most… It was the emptiness.
The cavern in that woman’s chest and mind before she took the jump…
Left me with a new wish—that I’d left her to be at peace as I slowly lifted the sheet back up to cover her face. Then I looked up and sighed.
On to the next.
* * *
One body at a time, I worked my way through. I had all night. Each glimpse was half a minute or so, but it took me longer than it ought to have.
Divining is a valuable ability, but I always forget how it drains me. Witnessing another’s death shouldn’t be like turning pages of a book, and it’s not. Feeling it… that’s penance enough if I never suffered a moment in Hell’s icy grip. There’s no way the White Throne left me numb to all else but the suffering of others without reason. A little on the nose, if you ask me.
But you know what? No one asks me. A Hand of God is just that. We aren’t called to be a mouthpiece or a sounding board. Just do the job and shut up. And that’s what I hope to do here.
I’d replaced all the coverings as I went. Most of the deaths were commonplace. A few from old age. One, a complication due to a botched amputation. People say life flashes before your eyes when you die, but for these people, their last thoughts were everything from loved ones to all the things they’d dreamed of doing but never did.
A couple died from too much drinking. Hard to believe, but it’s true. A young man—his wedding day—choked on his own vomit. Could’ve done without a sense of taste for that one. Another young man started up with the wrong crowd—threw exactly one punch before getting himself shot. One lead plum straight through the heart.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Courage and long life make shitty bedfellows.
Opium caught one. A veteran from the war, lost a leg and never kicked the stuff. Sad. His last thoughts were merely for more of the thing that killed him. The next one was an older woman. Matronly. Not sure where they found her, but at the time of her death, she wore opulence all over her and lived inside a beautiful plantation house. Servants roaming the halls. Big bed. That kinda place. Would’ve made old Reggie Dufaux proud.
Her husband ascertained she’d been sleeping with the stable hand and throttled her with his own two hands after hanging the man—a detail I saw, but no one else knew. The two lay like the lovers they were, side by side on the table, both their faces beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. A family affair. Might’ve rearranged their features after their deaths. However, if the mortician’s notes could be believed, the culprit—concerning which, they still had no leads—had the bodies dumped in the city to get lost amongst the rabble.
That was where I spent some extra time. Reading notes. Taking notes. Took a bit to search through cabinets for a writing implement.
“You’re wasting time again,” Shar said as I unlatched a locker containing a mirror and a straight-edge razor. I guess the mortician didn’t always have the luxury of going home, so many dead passed through these parts.
“It’ll only take a minute,” I grumbled as I kept rummaging.
“Curious, you think your time holds such significance.”
“You’re the one always griping about wasting it.”
“The truth you should cling to is that your time is borrowed. Your life is not your own, James Crowley.”
“So I’ve been told. Listen, ain’t it my duty to help when I can? ‘Love thy neighbors’ or some shit?”
“A dead man is no neighbor.”
“You say that when you’re down here.” I slammed a cabinet shut. “Last I checked, everyone up in those clouds of yours is dead.”
“And these Children have found refuge in their new homes, their new bodies.” She continued speaking, her ominous, smoky form flicking around the many reflective surfaces in the room. “Their corpses are empty vessels awaiting the moment they enter the ground and become a sumptuous repast for crawling critters.”
“Well, woe is for the living,” I said, still searching lockers. “What kind of angel doesn’t care about the truth of a killer?”
“On the contrary, Crowley, I care a great deal. Have you not heard, ‘vengeance is the Lord’s.’”
“You’ll have to forgive me, but I’d rather see them suffer than trust it’s happening behind closed doors. Look at that woman’s face,” I said. “I know where the bastard who did that lives. Saw his face because of the powers the White Throne entrusted me with. If I don’t do something about it, who will?”
“He will receive his judgment by Heaven, not his peers.”
“Like you said. I ain’t his peer,” I reminded her. “I’m a goddamned Hand of God.”
“Watch your words. A Hand has no true need for a tongue.”
See? Be seen, not heard. That was why I preferred to refer to myself as a Black Badge. Seemed more appropriately unimportant.
I found the pencil the mortician used to label the identities of each body beneath a half-eaten beignet. Thing had flies all over it, yet I still wished I could taste the pastry.
“There. No time at all. What did I tell you?”
Taking a tab, I wrote down HUSBAND CHOKED HER in big capital letters, then returned to her corpse and pinned it to her chest by staking it through the pencil. She wouldn’t feel it.
I could hear Shar asking if that made me feel better, even though she hadn’t.
It did.
Not that the wife hadn’t sinned by sleeping with another man, but there are other ways to handle such things. Like I said, I’m a gentleman.
“Shar, unless you plan to offer any useful information, I got more work to do.”
This time, no answer came.
* * *
It’d grown darker down there, the moon rising higher and farther away as night pressed on. More than ten Divinings observed so far, and nothing out of the ordinary. As if any death should seem mundane.
It made sense, though. There was a reason most people had no idea my side of the world even existed. If a whole city was wiped out by demons and monsters, humanity might just begin to think them more than a myth.
Not that things like that don’t happen, mind you. Sometimes dark magic does dark things. Where do you think the Mayans disappeared to?
But that’s just it. Supernatural incursions like that tend to leave little or no witnesses. They become tall tales or the ravings of lunatics who lost their minds from grief. I always wondered what might happen if the unnatural things I knew to be real became known by all. It’d probably be the end of society as we knew it. Mortals are like that, after all. Like Bram. I wasn’t exactly sure what his plan was, writing this book on vampires, but he was a fine example of what the world at large would be reduced to. If they discovered new creatures or beings, they’d be desperate to find them, explain them. To control them or wipe them out.
They’d lose, of course. Guns can only go so far.
Bye-bye, food source for vamps and Nephilim and whatever else. Bye-bye, toys for demons. It’s a delicate balance I’m part of preserving. Most monsters don’t crave war. They need humans like we need horses or cows.
I approached the next man—an older fellow. His cane had gotten caught in some loose stone, and he tripped. That was that. He was just walking along, thinking about lunch, when slip–crack. No fear or longings. Life is that fragile.
And then, just like that, I was on to the final corpse. I pulled the cloth down to find a middle-aged gentleman. A bit gaunt but more or less average. Good hair. Strong jawline. The only abnormal thing about him was his mouth was already sewn shut. Maybe they were getting him ready for presentation and didn’t have time to bring him to the parlor. I don’t know.
I stopped by his head and took my time. Didn’t bother whispering any Latin since, after the first few bodies, I was pretty sure I’d gotten my point across. Shar might call this a waste of time, but I’d solved one double homicide. Hard to argue with results.
“See you on the other side,” I said to the body before grabbing his shoulder and entering his mind…
* * *
My vision blurred. Thoughts were scrambled. The man I inhabited was very clearly inebriated. Unlike those poor gooks I’d Divined earlier, he had just enough in him to feel good and not die of something stupid. I could get used to staying here. Nothing like unwinding both brain and body, chugging toward the bottom of a barrel.
And I wasn’t alone.
We were naked as the day we were born. Sitting on the edge of a red, satin sheet draped over a mattress that looked fit for a queen. Gold, frilly tassels, a shower of translucent veils hanging from an oaken canopy.
And my vessel—sporting equipment to be envious of—was hard as a sailor in a whorehouse. Caught me off guard.
The woman sauntering toward him had pale skin and sharp features, eyes dark as the devil at midnight. Hair too. She had an old-world look to her, and the puffy scarlet dress she wore may as well have been donned at some French King’s ball. Heels made her tall, intimidating, and judging by my host, that wasn’t an issue for him.
“They say there’s nobody like you in this house,” the man said.
“Ils parlent sincèrement, mon amour,” the woman replied.
“Keep talking fancy like that, doll.”
He gave her a slap on the side of the thigh, a bit too high and hard for my taste. She grinned something fierce, then pulled a string on the back of her dress, and it cascaded down porcelain skin to her feet. She wore nothing underneath, not even a brassiere.
“Tu veux ça?” she asked, voice mellifluous like someone practiced in such arts.
He grasped her by the hips, fingers digging gouges in her flesh, but she didn’t budge. Instead, she pushed him down with unexpected strength, so his back was flat on the mattress.
“So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh, honey?”
“You get what you pay for,” she said with a thick French accent.
And he had paid. A lot more than any average woman of the night should cost. A price only a wealthy man could afford for a few hours of distraction.
She mounted him—me—and in that moment, I experienced the full touch of a lady, which I hadn’t known in decades. I lost focus—he did—or both of us. If Divining was always like this, I’d ditch Shar and shack up in a cemetery.
I knew my time in this memory was coming to an end quickly, but how? What’d he die of, pleasure?
She arched her back, breasts dangling over him. My host could barely contain himself as she leaned in for a kiss.
And then it happened.
A shimmer caught in her eye. Already dark eyes became solid, black orbs. Thick veins coruscated down from the sides of her lips to her throat. Her formerly delicate jaw went wide, unhinging like that of a snake, and in it grew needle-thin fangs.
Before I knew what hit me, she kissed me hard and bit down on the back of my tongue. Pain rushed through my mouth, along with the taste of iron. I panicked and tried to kick her off, but she held me down with the force of a rail worker despite her slight frame. And all the while, she kept riding me like I was a wild horse she was trying to break.
The confusion of pain and pleasure had my host paralyzed. Finally, logic returned. He slapped. Punched. Whatever he could do as blood rushed out of his lower regions and into her mouth. Pulling free, he turned to the side, moaning and unable to speak from his cloven tongue. Blood disappeared onto sheets the precise sanguine shade.
I faced a baroque-style golden mirror on top of an old dresser. In it, the reflection of my host squirmed on the bed, all by himself. No sign of the woman at all.
But she wasn’t gone. “Reviens vers moi,” she said.
If his heart hadn’t been racing before, it was then. Sobered him up fast. She clutched his head on either side and pulled his lips back to hers to continue her meal. His heart thumped against his rib cage, terror inducing a fatal heart attack as she fed…
* * *
“Get off me!” I think I shouted, but I lisped from what just happened to my tongue in the memory. While it seemed like a lot, it all occurred in less than a minute. Mounted by a vampiric seductress, killed as they made love. I’d never heard of a vamp feeding with such gratification. Not just on blood but on stilted emotion.
Hell, I’ve never seen one feed with such clarity of focus either. In all my days, the broods I’d faced were unthinking, singularly-minded beasts.
“Jesus, he’s alive!” a voice blurted, I think in my present. Everything remained a bit of a fog. And while I staggered back from shock, my body was suddenly thrust in another direction by an unfelt force. Shells clattered. I looked down. A chunk of my side and clothes were blown onto the corpses.
I peered back at two grimy-looking fellas with leathery skin standing a few feet away, perturbation plastered on their faces. Rotting yellow teeth. Black coats with more holes in them than a block of cheese.
Scavengers, ruffians. Whoever they were, I knew the type.
“Now hold on a sec—”
A shotgun flashed and struck me on the other side. The corpse table slid back from the weight of me. My hand dipped toward one of my pistols. I couldn’t say why these hicks were in a morgue, but they’d pissed me off too much to get a chance at mercy.
Another gunshot pierced the serene silence of the room. My world suddenly turned sideways. I’d memorized the grip and draw of my pistols long ago, even before I lost feeling as a Black Badge, but the gun never came. No part of me responded. Suddenly, I was lying on the stone floor, my head facing a way it shouldn’t have been able to, considering where my body wound up.