Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel (9 page)

“Finished?”

The vet glanced over his shoulder at Blake, then nodded. “As much as it can be.”

“Thanks…” He raised a hand and rubbed his face, still bearded and dirt-encrusted. “Probably a good thing I wasn’t here for most of it.”

“I wish I could have said the same for me.” The vet got a hand under Blake’s arm and helped him sit up. “I’ve never seen anything like that before…” His eyes were already shadowed with fearful memory. “And I don’t want to again.”

Blake swung his legs over the side of the table. He stood up, holding onto the edge to steady himself.

“There’s a mirror over there.” The vet pointed. “Take a look.”

Legs stiff from being on the table for so long, Blake plodded over to the other side of the room. The mirror on top of the cabinet was large enough for him to need both hands to pick it up. Holding the glass at arm’s length, he examined the job that the vet had done. The stitches through the coat were even and precise, as good as any that a tailor could have done. And far better than the clumsy repairs that he had done himself all the previous times that the coat had been torn open during his long journey home.

With a black-nailed fingertip, Blake prodded at his chest beneath the coat. He could feel where the stitches entered his flesh and came back out. The coat was still black and stiff with dirt and dried blood, but at least he no longer appeared as if he were physically coming apart. There were no fresh drops of red spattering the floor beneath the coat’s hem.

He set the mirror back down. “We even?”

“You’ve paid enough,” said the vet. “I just want you out of here.”

He followed the vet to the building’s front door. On the way, Blake halted and looked over at the cages full of animals. “What about them?”

The vet shrugged. “I got more tests to run. These are what I run ’em on.”

Blake looked at the ragged, sad-eyed creatures. They were just like him. Trapped in an existence that was neither life nor death, with nothing to fill their days but pain and misery. He knew what it was like to be in a cage, with no way out.

There had been no one to help him. But for these—

“Here—” Blake dug into the overcoat’s pocket, and tossed the vet another rubber-banded wad of money. “Tests are over. They all passed.”

The vet looked at the cash, his greedy eyes growing wider.

“Still not enough?” Blake tossed over another wad, then another. So many that they started tumbling down to the vet’s feet. “Tell your bosses that you had a break-in or something. Then find yourself another job. If I come back this way, I don’t want to see the lights on in this place. You got it?”

The vet could barely look across the top of the green mound held against his chest. “Okay. You got a deal. Hell, with this much, I’ll never have to work again!”

Blake pushed open the door and headed for the alleyway. A few moments later, he was almost knocked off his feet by the rush of dogs streaming past him, their joyous yaps and howls bouncing off the nearby buildings. A couple of the older and partly crippled ones looked back at him for a moment, then hobbled after the others racing into the rain-washed streets and freedom.

6.

He dreamt, and remembered. For Nathaniel, there was no difference now.

In that darkened room, the one inside his own head, he could see a seven-year-old boy. From high above, drifting through the starless dark of unconsciousness, he looked down and saw the child, sleeping on a threadbare sofa, one of the torn cushions bunched up under his head for a pillow. Across the night-filled window, tattered curtains sagged from a rod with rusting screws pulling from the wall at either end. The child shivered, thin arms hugging himself tight; there was nothing but dead ashes in the fireplace. On the mantel above, a photo of the boy’s mother was draped with a black mourning ribbon; tucked in a corner of the cheap gilt frame was a three-sentence obituary, a yellowing scrap from a newspaper dated six months earlier.

Nathaniel felt himself falling toward the child, the child that he had been so long ago, in that other life. In his dreaming, he spread his arms out as he fell; he might have been an angel about to bestow a kiss upon the unlined brow below him. But when he opened his eyes, there was no more falling. He lay curled up on the sofa, not dreaming of the child he had been. He was that child once more.

I remember,
thought Nathaniel.
I remember
 …

Something had woken him up. The clanking noise of an empty bottle being knocked over and rolling across the floor’s bare wooden planks. The little boy raised his head and looked over to the sagging easy chair that held his unshaven father. Who was snoring, with the wet sloppy sound that drunks make when they pass out. More empty bottles, some of them knocked over and some of them still upright, surrounded the chair.

With his knuckles, the boy rubbed the sleep from his eyes. With the fire out, the house was cold enough to raise goose bumps under his shirt. But he didn’t want to climb the stairs to his room and crawl under the flea-ridden blankets. What if his dad woke up, and no one was there? The house empty and silent, and all the bottles empty? He was afraid of what his dad might do then, in that dark moment.

Suddenly, his father’s eyes popped open wide, hands clawing deep into the chair’s worn-through arms.

“Dad!” Nathaniel jumped up in shock. “What’s wrong?”

His father didn’t seem to hear him, but went right on staring into the space before him. In terror, the drunk heaved himself up from the chair, scooped Nathaniel from the couch, and held him out by the arms, like a human shield.

And now he could see what his father had been staring at. There was somebody else in the room with them, though the door was still locked and bolted. A pale, expressionless figure gazed over Nathaniel’s head. A hand with no fingernails, so bloodless that it looked as if it might have been formed from candle wax, reached out toward his father’s chest. He squirmed around and watched as a ball of light began to glow beneath his father’s rib cage.

“Wait!” his father cried out. “I know what you want—I know it’s time—but don’t take me, please! Take someone else. Take
him
!”

Death’s fingers drew the soul closer and closer to the surface. “I do not make bargains, and I do not take substitutes.” The voice was flat and without emotion. “No one can escape their fate. It is pointless to try.”

“But … I swear he’s worth it!” His dad’s face was luminous with panicky sweat. His coward’s hands pushed Nathaniel closer to the pallid, waxen figure before them. “Take a look at him, if you don’t believe me. He’s weird! He always has been. Just like his damned mother was, before she died. Look!”

Death’s unhurried gaze moved down to Nathaniel. A blank moment, then he frowned as though puzzled. “You can … see me?”

Nathaniel managed to give a single slow nod.

“But … how?” Death tilted his head, studying the small figure before him. “Only those who are about to die can see me. But it’s not yet your time.”

“I told you! I told you he was weird!” Nathaniel’s father squeezed his son’s arms tighter. “I’ve always known it—ever since he was a baby—”

“This should be impossible…”

“Exactly! So, his soul must be worth enough, right? Enough to let me go?”

“Perhaps…” Death leaned down, peering into Nathaniel’s eyes. “Perhaps it is worth a great deal more…”

“What do you mean?”

Death laid a cold thumb on Nathaniel’s eyelid and pulled it open wider. “He can see me, your son. But I can’t see him … No matter how deep I look, I cannot see the moment of his death. And I should be able to see that with all human beings.”

A wavering smile appeared on his father’s face. “And that’s good, right?”

“That is impossible to say…” The waxen figure let go of the father’s glowing soul, and allowed it to sink back into his chest. “There is a darkness in this boy that I have never seen before. A darkness almost as deep … as my own.” He looked back to the father. “I cannot deny that my curiosity has been aroused. Give him to me, and I will do what you ask. I shall grant you two more years in which to drink yourself to death.”

“Make it five,” said his father. “Or better yet—ten.”

Death considered it for a moment, his pallid face as still as a corpse. “Very well. Ten years. But only because the boy is so unique.”

His father let go of Nathaniel, and sank back into the armchair.

Death laid his hand upon Nathaniel’s shoulder, ready to claim his prize. Nathaniel felt the cold of that touch creep down inside him, toward his heart. It made him shiver, but not from the ice that entered his veins.

“Come with me, child…” Death increased his grip, and the night’s winds caressed him. Without knowing how, Nathaniel felt himself falling silently through the fabric of space. “It is time, I think, for us to learn who you really are…”

*   *   *

The rain woke him.

Or perhaps it didn’t—

Nathaniel was as accustomed to its sound as anyone in the city. The unrelenting downpour was constant. The beating of the rain against the window was louder than usual, though. He knew that meant there was a storm coming. A big one, that would lash the empty streets and send rivers down the overflowing gutters. But even that shouldn’t have been enough to drag him back into consciousness—not as exhausted as he had been. It must’ve been something inside him, some dark memory, or a dream of the world’s hidden things, that had done it.

His eyes were closed, but he knew where he was. He reached out with one hand and felt the edges of the rough, splintery bed frame, barely big enough to hold him.

The musty smell of damp stones touched his nostrils with each breath he pulled in. The old groundskeeper’s cottage, here in the middle of the city’s oldest cemetery, was as much home to him as anywhere he had ever known. It had been since the night that Death had brought him here.

“Are you awake, Nathaniel?” The words were spoken in the calm, dispassionate voice that had become so familiar. “Can you hear me?”

He opened his eyes. And saw Death’s face, bloodlessly pale, looking down at him.

“How long … how long have I been out?”

“Several hours.” Death sat on a rickety wooden chair beside the bed. “I let you sleep in the hope that you would recover your strength.”

Nathaniel pushed himself up from the thin, creaking mattress. “Don’t know if it worked yet … I feel like someone hit me with a baseball bat.”

Death reached out and touched Nathaniel’s chest with a waxen fingertip. “The pain you felt, was it here?”

Nathaniel winced. “Right there. And it still hurts like hell.”

“Then it is … as I feared…” Death turned and gazed out at the drizzling rain. The window was cracked open just enough to let a chill breeze slide into the room. “I must admit that I feel responsible for what has happened to you. More than anyone else, I should have seen it coming. I knew that the realm in which I exist was never meant for mortals such as yourself. No human being was ever intended to witness what happens when I remove a person’s soul. But when I came across you … and looked inside you … somehow I thought an exception had been made.” He turned back to Nathaniel. “You were able to learn my magic, and control the darkness as I alone had done before. That led me to believe that everything was different where you were concerned. And that I was no longer alone in this grey universe.” No expression of regret showed on Death’s face; he might have been enumerating the last few leaves on the branches of a winter tree. “But I see now that I was wrong.”

Unease touched Nathaniel’s heart. “Why? What’s happening to me?”

Death pointed to Nathaniel’s chest again. “The divine pins that hold the soul inside a human being are exceedingly difficult to break,” he said. “When they are snapped apart to release a soul, it creates a powerful shock wave across the whole of the realm in which I exist. It seems now that your exposure to such shocks has damaged you. So much so that they have weakened the pins that hold your own soul in place. You must have been feeling this pain for many years, Nathaniel. It was a mistake not to tell me about it earlier.”

“I know…” He looked down at his chest. But despite the pain, he couldn’t see any obvious bruise or injury. “I feel stupid now. And I’m sorry.”

“When did it begin?” Death seemed unperturbed by the confession. “Did it start with the first soul you saw harvested? The morning after I brought you here?”

Nathaniel nodded. “But at the time, I didn’t know whether it was pain or grief that I was feeling.” The memory moved like a dark current through his thoughts. “When you turned over that first body on the sidewalk, I expected it to be a stranger. But then I saw that it was him … my father.…” He gazed silently in front of himself for a moment, remembering. “I suppose the shock of it was so strong that it hid the pain. Otherwise, you would have seen it from the start.”

“I should have warned you first, about what was coming,” mused Death, remembering the moment, too. “I am aware of that now. But it took time for me to learn what human beings need. As well you know…”

Nathaniel glanced over to the small iron fireplace in the corner. It had been months before Death had thought of putting it there for him, to keep his new apprentice warm.

But at least he thought about it eventually,
he thought.
At least he cared
 …

“I suppose—” Nathaniel’s memory returned to that morning, and the sight of his father’s smashed-up body in the rain. “It was no surprise to you, because you already knew it would happen. You knew he wouldn’t survive those ten years, even as you gave them to him.”

“I saw it, yes,” said Death. “But granting them to him made it easier for me to take you away, to where your powers could be better understood. When he awoke, and realized what his cowardice had done to you, he was unable to survive the shame of it. As soon as he was sober again, he threw himself from the rooftop. And although I make it a point to never judge those whose souls I harvest, I cannot say, in his case, that I disapproved of his decision.”

Nathaniel tried to force the image of his father’s broken body away again, and raised his hand back to his chest. “And after that … Well, the pain just kept on coming. It grew worse with every reaping round you took me on. But I kept it secret from you because I was afraid.”