He gobbled and clawed. I tightened my grip.
“They’d have your head, they would. Poor stubborn Miss Hoobin. She preferred her Balptist verse to the mouthings of your Church, and you decided you’d make her pay. What better way to educate her in the mercies of your Church than to feed her to a room of halfdead, you miserable little swine. Isn’t that right?”
“I’ll tell you,” he said, gasping around my grasp. I had him by the throat, one-handed. He grappled and clawed but couldn’t dislodge my grip. “I’ll tell you where they are. Tell you where the halfdead are.”
I laughed. The sound of it was strange, more thunder than voice.
“Oh, you shall indeed. Do you think that will save you?”
“You want to know, don’t you?”
I laughed again.
“I know already.” The huldra whispered again, telling me what was ready to leap from the Thin Man’s panicked lips.
“Below another old warehouse. On Santos. Three blocks from here. They’ve gathered there, already. The party begins in an hour. Have I missed anything?”
He coughed and wheezed, began to turn purple. “You…swore. You…swore…you wouldn’t…harm.”
“Did I now?”
I let go. He fell limp down on the table, threw up, lifted his face, sputtering and spewing.
I saw, without turning, the door open behind me. I saw Ethel Hoobin march inside, and his brothers, and then dozens more. All bore weapons. Ethel and his brothers bore short lengths of chain, each bearing a fresh-sharpened hook at the end.
“Mustn’t break a promise,” I whispered to him. “I shall do you no harm.” I backed away. Let him see the New People, let him read the murder written plain on their hard wet faces.
“Pity that these gentlemen are parties to no such oath. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘pound of flesh’? It’s a quaint country saying. Comes from those chains, and those hooks. I’m sure you can imagine the rest. And if not, well, you’ll see, soon enough.”
I turned from him. Ethel Hoobin met my gaze, though many would not.
“Has he my Martha?”
“He has. He took her.”
Behind me, the Thin Man let out a ruckus. Men rushed forward and blows sounded. He yelped and went quiet.
“Do you know where?”
I told Ethel where. I told him to finish his business. I would wait outside, and we would go and get Martha.
He nodded, and the way parted. As the Thin Man began to sob and beg, I left Innigot’s.
It was still raining outside. The huldra showed me a hidden thing, and I brushed the rain away and set out for Santos Street, through a night made as bright as day.
The huldra whispered. I listened. I knew I would have no need of Evis and his friends, or Ethel and his. The blood I meant to spill lay ahead, and I could not be troubled to wait.
So I walked. Each step took me farther, each breath made me stronger, each whisper of the huldra left me taller, let me see more than I’d seen an instant before. I heard music in the storm, heard voices in the wind, saw wonders and terrors in each flicker of far-off lightning.
Soon, I realized I was no longer looking at walls and doors, but looking down on rooftops and rain-swept streets. I towered above it all, my every step that of a giant, my footfalls the very thunder. I laughed, and the skies split with a terrible bright light. I saw hidden forms twist and dance in the shadows.
Below and behind me, shapes scurried, darting from here to there. Some were dark and swift and seemed at times to fly, while some were slow and steady-Evis, I recalled, as if from an old and distant memory. Avalante. Evis and his soldiers, and the New People keeping carefully apart from each other, antlike in my wake.
I realized I could reach down and crush them, stamp them out like insects. The huldra knew, would show me how. Strange memories rose and fell, of doing just such a thing many times before. Other images followed-faces in the dark, a tower on a hill, fire raining from a wounded crimson sky.
“No,” I said, my voice booming. “It is true I spoke my name. Even so, I shall have no other.”
I wasn’t sure why I said those words. But the huldra knew. It turned me back toward the warehouse on Santos, and soon I could see down upon it, even see the cold dark figures huddled unknowing within.
The huldra knew my wishes. I shrank, until I faced a door. I let loose my hold upon the rain, let it beat down over me, let it sting my face and my mouth with its acrid taste of bitter ashes.
I put forth my hand. Knock twice fast, twice slow, twice fast again, whispered the huldra.
I obeyed. In a moment, I heard the creak of a bar being lifted, and when I tried the door again it opened.
I stepped inside, let the rain and the dark and the huldra blur my form into a simulacra of the Thin Man’s.
I stood in a dark foyer. Wood floor. Wood walls. Ten by ten, maybe, with a single second door set in the wall facing the one through which I’d entered. No candles burned, but I saw.
Saw a halfdead before me. He wore no House insignia, but the huldra told me a name. Mercross, oldest and worst of all the dark Houses.
I didn’t care. Because I saw something else, there in the dark. Faint, but unmistakable, and utterly and forever unforgivable.
He bore the mark of blood, rich and red about his hands, about his mouth. He’d washed, but I could see. Darla’s blood, perhaps. My Darla’s blood.
I made a sound, something between a shout and a growl.
An instant of confusion, when he saw I wasn’t the same man he’d admitted. Another instant to raise his pale hands toward me, to open his mouth, to leap.
An instant too long. That which had blossomed in my soul, back in the alley on Regent Street, took root, fed by rage and fury, fed by the blood lingering on his lips.
I caught him up. Caught him and stilled his cries and let him flop like a fresh-caught trout in my hands. I let him see my eyes. Let him see his fate, mirrored within.
“You die for what you did. You die for her.”
I pulled him apart. Easily. I pulled, twisted and tore and did not stop until he was a twitching red ruin. I smeared what was left upon the walls.
When I was done, I took hold of the far door and pulled it from its hinges.
“Come and be judged,” I said, and my voice rang out like an Angel’s. “Come and face the hand of wrath!”
Shapes flew. Harsh voices cried out.
I squeezed myself through the tiny door, and my Darla had her vengeance at last.
Some time later, I became aware.
Aware of voices, furtive footfalls and the glare of torches and lanterns.
The sounds rang hollow, in a large and empty room. I blinked, and the dark fled, and I saw.
It had been a warehouse. Tall bare walls, high flat ceiling, warped plank floor. Windows all boarded, doors all barred, though attempts had been made to pull down the bars from within.
Few such attempts had succeeded.
Carnage lay about me. Blood-thin and black-covered nearly every surface. The odd arm or leg completed the grim decor.
I coughed, tasted blood and wiped my face.
My hand came away red.
I scrambled to my feet. Torchlight flowed through a broken door, and a man stepped through, saw me, shouted and stepped quickly back.
The man darted back through, half a dozen of his fellows and a pair of halfdead on his heels. The halfdead trained crossbows upon me, would have fired had not another pale form appeared and shouted them down.
I spat, and the spittle was red. My head spun, and my vision was alternately clear or shadowed. My ears rang, and when I moved I felt as if my limbs were the wrong size, the wrong shape.