Alexander C. Irvine (28 page)

Passing a row of dingy gin mills, Archie saw a narrow space between two of them, too slight even to be called an alley. It looked more like the result of an error in measurement on the part of one of the buildings’ architects. He stopped, waiting a beat to make sure Royce would see him, then sidestepped into the space.

It was barely shoulder-wide, and dark enough that Archie couldn’t see how far it extended. He pushed on into it, kicking bottles and bits of refuse aside, hoping he could get out of sight before Royce came after him. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, a wider alley appeared, intersecting this one another thirty or forty feet ahead. Archie broke into a run, half from fear and half hoping that the noise would draw Royce after him before the Rabbit’s vision could adjust.

Coming around the corner, Archie slipped on a patch of wet bricks surrounding the base of a tain barrel. His feet went out from under him, and he landed hard on the bare bricks of the alley, jarring his tailbone. He looked up at the sound of crashing from the narrow side-cut and saw a pig standing perhaps ten feet away, a huge sow weighing at least twice what Archie himself did. The pig looked back at him for a long moment as if she was calculating something, then trotted off down the alley, her bulbous body impossibly dainty on tiny feet.

Archie drew the knife and flattened himself against the wall next to the rear door of a groggery. Water dripped into the rain barrel at his left, and his heart slammed against his ribs hard enough that he could actually feel his body moving against the damp wall at his back.
Just like a rabbit,
he thought again,
run to ground not by dogs but by a Rabbit.
Irony followed him everywhere. But this rabbit wouldn’t simply die of fright, no.

Then someone stepped into the alley and Archie drove his knife into the man’s midsection.

In the split second before the knife struck home, Archie was terrifyingly convinced that this man wasn’t Royce at all, but just some beggar or cutpurse seeking an easy mark.
Christ,
he thought.
What if I’ve killed an innocent man?

The knife buried itself to the hilt, grating along bone as warm blood surged out over Archie’s hands. The man gagged and seized Archie’s wrist, dragging Archie with him as he sank to the ground. Once he’d fallen, his grasp weakened and Archie worked the knife free, seeing that his victim was in fact Royce McDougall.

Royce lay on his side, knees drawn up and both hands clasped to his belly. He gritted his teeth against a series of short wheezing groans. “Nnnggahh,” he said. “You’ve killed me, Archie. Son of a p—” A bubble of saliva broke on his lips. “Bitch.”

Archie stood, watching Royce’s blood drip from his hands. In his dream, the night before …

Everything around him grew clear as if it were noon, and when Archie looked up into the cloudy night, he could see the shadow of a rabbit in the moon, leading the
Centzon Mimixcoa
in a mad dance around the earth. The smell of Royce’s blood sparked a hunger in him, and he saw through the dying young man’s bones and skin to the heart struggling in his chest.

“Yollotl, eztli,”
he said.
“Ompa onquiza’n tlalticpac.”

Fear broke through the sweaty mask of pain on Royce’s face. “No,” he begged, trying to push himself away from Archie on strengthless legs. “Not like that. Christ, I’m dead already, isn’t that enough?”

Archie knelt beside him, smelling blood and seeing it crawl between his fingers, along the tracery of veins beneath the skin. Black ants formed intricate whorls around the splatters of Royce’s blood staining the bricks. The knife was hungry, hot in his hands, and Archie was hungry, too.

“Please, Prescott,” Royce husked. His hand slipped on his own blood and he fell onto his back, still scraping his heels on the ground. “Please, it was
business.
A man’s reputation—”

He broke off and his gaze fixed on something just over Archie’s right shoulder. “Steen!” Royce tried to shout, but his voice was barely above a whisper. “Steen, God—!”

The flat crack of a gunshot stopped Royce short. The sound drove like a wedge into Archie’s mind, splitting apart the sights and smells, dropping cold reality over him like a sudden rainstorm. He saw the knife, streaked with blood like a dead man’s script. A man’s life, spilled on his hands, on his coat, on the shrinking voice of his spirit—
and I wanted more than his life. I would have eaten his soul.

“Corrupts absolutely, doesn’t it?” Riley Steen said, and laughed. “Friend, I should know.”

He stepped in front of Archie, obscuring Royce’s sprawled graceless body, and waved a stubby derringer. “Rabbits,” he giggled. “Nothing but misfortune and drunkenness. Not the way you want to go, Mr. Prescott. Not the way I want to go, either. I only learn a lesson once.”

Steen ran a finger along the flat of Archie’s bloody knife. “Hemoglobin. Corpuscles. Merry little red cells. Or, if your priorities are slightly different,
eztli. Chalchihuitl.
The precious fluid that feeds the gods, makes the world turn. Ridiculous, isn’t it? But you and I both know it’s true. Look at me, Mr. Prescott.”

Archie closed his eyes, breaking the connection between himself and the knife clasped in his hands. When he opened them again, he could look at Riley Steen.

A maniacal grin dominated Steen’s face, spreading wide enough that his lips were actually split in several places, smearing perfect white teeth. A single dead incisor stood out, black as a tree stump rotting in spring floods. Steen’s cheeks and mouth were caked with streaks of dried gore, which still leaked in slow trails from the springs of his eye sockets.

He shot Royce right through the forehead, Archie thought, and he doesn’t have eyes to see.

And that gunshot would be drawing attention, even in a rough area like the waterfront. Archie wanted to be gone, and quickly.

“The lesson here, Mr. Prescott,” Steen said jovially, tapping at the corner of one empty socket, “is careful what you wish for. A hoary adage, to be sure, but no admonition lives to become hoary unless it has some truth to it.”

Archie searched himself for the vengeful rage he’d felt toward Steen. He couldn’t find it. Clearly the chacmool had done something horrible to him; the man stood there like a grinning nightmare parody of himself, interposed between a man he’d killed and a man he’d once tried to, and still he acted like a clown. Archie could muster no desire to kill him.

“Why’d you kill Royce, Steen?” he asked. “I can’t understand you doing me a favor, and he would have died anyway.”

“Certainly he would. But I was doing you a favor, Mr. Prescott. If I hadn’t shot that boy, you’d have scooped out his heart and eaten it like a flavored ice. Not—” Steen stifled a sudden guffaw, bending over and covering his mouth. He shook like a consumptive in a coughing fit, a tendril of thick fluid dripping from one eye socket onto the grimy bricks.

“Not,” he finished when he’d regained control of himself, “the proper course toward redemption of one’s daughter.”

“And what’s your interest in my saving Jane?” Archie said. He was still shaken by killing Royce, and Steen’s glibness was beginning to heat his temper.

“Propriety,” Steen said grandly. “Especially now, when I— see—things in a different light, I have a keen sense of propriety. When I allied myself with the chacmool, my reasoning was that it would be improper—unjust, if you prefer—to let pass such an opportunity to rectify the errors of Mr. Burr. To write the history of this nation. Of the world.”

“And lives don’t factor into this reasoning? My life? Jane’s?” Archie’s vision actually began to redden around the edges, and he calmed himself. Whatever else Steen said, he was right about one thing: Archie couldn’t allow himself to be seduced by the power the chacmool offered. He had to keep a level head.

Steen’s face contorted into a sort of gleeful frown. When he spoke, he sounded like a patient teacher educating a simpleton. “Greatness exacts its toll in lives, Mr. Prescott. I heard someone say that once, and I believe it. Measure your daughter’s life against the redirection of history. Surely you see my point?”

“I see that you’re a raving madman,” Archie growled. He rose to his feet, holding the knife pointed at Steen. “That’s the only reason I don’t let your guts out on these bricks. Now get out of my way.”

“Of course I’m mad, Mr. Prescott. So would you be.” Steen leveled the derringer at a point just above Archie’s navel. “But I’m a madman with one bullet left. Let’s parley.”

“If you’re going to shoot me, Steen, do it. I don’t have time for chatter with lunatics.” Archie sloshed the knife around in the tain barrel, then sheathed it and washed his hands. As he walked away, he could feel the gun aimed at the small of his back.

“Wait a moment, Mr. Prescott.” Steen ran up beside Archie, and slowed to walk next to him. “Surely you don’t think I’d have gone to the trouble of killing Mr. McDougall and saving you from Tlaloc’s embrace simply to kill you myself?” He stopped suddenly.

“Although the irony—ha! There would be humor in it, would there not?”

“Leave me alone, Steen,” Archie said, and kept walking.

He’d gone another ten steps when he heard Steen say, “I know where your daughter is. She’s already in the cave, and I can show you where.”

It’s a trick, Archie thought. Some demented scheme to distract me. But he stopped anyway and turned to face Steen. “And why would you tell me? Another act of generosity?”

“Hardly,” Steen chortled. “More along the lines of enlightened self-interest. You’re still opposing the chacmool; I find myself wishing to do the same. There’s a proverb among the Arabs: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ “

“So it’s revenge you’re after? Chacmool gouged out your eyes and you want to get back at it?”

Every trace of humor faded from Steen’s disfigured face. “You understand nothing, Prescott,” Steen said grimly. “I would give up my eyes all over again, if it meant I would only be blind.

“I’m not
human
any more, don’t you understand?” Steen shouted, and then he started to laugh. “My—my heart beats in my body, but I
see
—” Steen’s words trailed off into a long screaming laugh and he sank to his knees, fresh tears cutting clean tracks through the gore on his face.

If the shot didn’t draw attention, that fit certainly will, Archie thought. He stood watching Steen until the spasm subsided and Steen lay on his side, sweating and gasping for breath.

“I see what the dead see,” Steen finished. “And it’s all so terribly
ironic.”

That’s what I saw when I killed Royce, Archie thought. That’s why everything was so bright—what do the dead need of light?

He shuddered a bit, and despite himself felt faint sympathy for Steen. Forcing it down, he prodded the deranged wagoner with the toe of his boot. “Where’s Jane?” he demanded.

Steen’s head jerked up, puppyish eagerness lighting up the ruin of his face. “Splendid!” he shouted. “Come with me.”

“E
xcuse me,
Step
hen
. What are you doing?”

Stephen dropped the blanket he’d just taken from the shelf in the hotel laundry. He turned around to see Dr. Croghan in the doorway, in pajamas, robe, and a stern expression made grimmer by the gloomy candle in his hand.

“Chill in the air tonight, Dr. Croghan,” he said. “Charlotte’s got a little cough and I wanted to make sure it didn’t get worse.” Of all the people who might have noticed his midnight trip to the hotel storerooms, Stephen had thought Dr. Croghan would be the last. He was usually asleep before nine o’clock; what was he doing out in his bedclothes at this hour?

“My sympathies,” Croghan said. “I’ll look in on her in the morning.”

“No,” Stephen said quickly. “She just needs to stay warm. She’ll be fine.”

“Are you now a medical man, Stephen?” Croghan let the question hang in the air for just a moment. “I thought not. The last thing I need is fever spreading around just as the weather begins to warm. The next few weeks will be extremely busy.”

Stephen saw that he would have to concede the point. He wondered how Charlotte would react when he asked her to play sick for Dr. Croghan. Her good humor was part of why he’d married her, but she’d want to know what he had been doing in the laundry, and he’d have to tell her some other story. He hadn’t lied to her during the course of their young marriage, and he didn’t much relish having to start.

But, he reminded himself, bigger things were at stake.

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said. “Visitors’ll start lining up soon. I’d just as soon not have to worry about her while I’m in the cave.”

“Good. I’ll be by in the morning.” Croghan stepped into the laundry and set his candle on a shelf above an ironing board. “Empty your pockets now and then you can go.”

Stephen had already taken a step toward the door before all of the doctor’s words registered. “My pockets?” he said dumbly.

“If you would,” Croghan said, his tone of voice leaving no doubt that the phrase was just a formality. He pushed aside a pile of sheets and tapped the cleared space on the ironing board. “Here. Someone’s been stealing small items from the hotel. I didn’t think you were the type, but then here you are skulking in the middle of the night. Blood is thicker than water, I suppose.”

Fury struck Stephen so heavily that he nearly choked on his own heartbeat. A vivid fantasy streaked through his mind— Croghan strangled on the laundry floor, he and Charlotte running for their lives. But where would they run? The cave had made Stephen slightly notorious. And Croghan’s life was not worth having to leave it.

Silently he emptied his pockets, placing each item carefully on the smooth cotton draping the ironing board. Pipe, tobacco pouch, pocketknife, matches, candle, a handful of coins.

Croghan poked among Stephen’s possessions, lingering over the gold piece Stephen still carried from his trip with old Professor Tattersfield. “Fine,” he said eventually. “Go ahead with the blanket, Stephen. I’ll look in on Charlotte tomorrow.”

He paused in the doorway to give Stephen a wink. “Give her my best, will you?” he said, and left Stephen alone in the laundry.

Stephen replaced his pipe and pocketknife and other things in his pockets, smoldering with a rage that was all the more focused because of its impotence. He picked up the blanket and rolled it under his arm, then stood for a long time turning the gold piece over in his fingers. He wanted to throw it away, fling it into the river just because Croghan’s attention had fallen on it. But it reminded Stephen of other things as well: in his mind he saw it glinting on the floor of Bottomless Pit, and he thought again of promises made to him.

Come Monday morning, Dr. Croghan,
he thought as he slipped the coin into his pocket,
you’ll see just how thick blood really is.