The Devil's Detective (34 page)

“Pale,” agreed the demon and snatched at Morgan's head, now smeared in filth and diluted blood.

“No,” said Fool, rolling it out of the demon's reach. “I still don't understand. Tell me more.”

“What more?” it said. “He was pale. White.”

“What shape was it? What kind of demon?”

“Not a demon, a man. Pale man, hitting the other one, hitting and hitting. Other man soon dead, pale man kept hitting then blue flash. Just a pale man,” said the thing and then fell on the head as Fool stepped away with the world pitching beneath his feet.

The demon's screech rose into the air behind Fool as it discovered what he already suspected, that Morgan's soul had been torn free from his flesh and all that was left was the tasteless remnants. Fool trudged up the slope away from the water, ignoring the noise, his gun hanging loosely by his side. When he reached the trees, the shapes scattered about him, carving him a path to continue unmolested.

A man. A pale man. Could it be possible? It was one of the rules of Hell that humans couldn't kill each other; not a rule written down but a Law, the same as breathing to live and the sky being above the ground and only the chalkis flying in Hell and the Information Men having guns were Laws, things built into the fabric of Hell itself. Humans were born out of the Limbo outside, the knowledge of their sins removed from them except at the most basic level, and they lived at the whim not of each other, but of demons and their desires. There was no escape, no salvation except through the random process of Elevation, and what happiness there was tended to be fleeting and delicate.

A man. No, it couldn't be, men could not kill men. Was it one of the orphans, maybe, human from a distance but a demon closer? No, demonkind knew each other, knew human from demon, because that was how even the smallest and weakest of them knew whom to abuse and whom to avoid. If the demon said it had been a man, unless it was lying it had been a man. A pale, murderous man.

Under the trees it was darker, the light fragmented by the branches overhead and the thickening mist. It smelled musty and rotten, as though it never dried out, as though the dampness in the air was a permanent,
sour presence. The bloodstained mud had been near here, with its uneven necklace of teeth with their clinging worms of gum.

Had a man learned the art of murder? Of violence? Humans had attacked demons during the riots, Fool remembered, the flames of that night fanned by his own actions and what people believed he had done at the lakeside. He had changed as well, he realized, was becoming something new; perhaps he was not the only one.
Could it be?
he wondered. A man who had changed, learned to somehow break the rules, was killing other men and releasing souls by their violence? Was there something about a human killing a human that freed the souls of the dead?

Could it be?

Something behind Fool crashed and then he heard the sound of footsteps, dull impacts as something ran across the damp ground, getting louder as it neared him. He turned and the demon from the lakeside was charging toward him, weaving between the trees, Morgan's head swinging in one clawed hand. It came within a few feet of Fool and pulled up, hurling the head at him. He ducked and Morgan's face curved through the air above him, a pale streak against the darkness, before hitting a tree trunk with a noise like a foot pulling loose from wet earth. It left a dark stain on the trunk as it bounced away, strands of the man's gray hair caught on the gnarled bark.

“It is empty,” hissed the demon. “Foul!”

“I didn't say it wasn't,” said Fool. He tightened his grip on the gun but did not lift it, was aware of movement around him, of shadows merging and flowing in a whirlpool whose center he had become. “You didn't ask.”

As if in response, the demon bent over and vomited out a thin stream of slime that stank, strings of bile that were a pale ivory in color spraying from its mouth. It raised its head, peering at Fool; its eyes were cloudy, covered in a thin film, and the flesh around its mouth was dark, cracking.
Soulless flesh must taste really fucking horrible
, thought Fool and couldn't help but smile.

“Empty,” the thing said again and hunched over, stretching its arms out and spreading its fingers wide. Its nails were curved into vicious claws and its fingers were webbed, and Fool understood in a disconnected
way that the thin planes of skin would help it swim. He imagined it pulling itself through the dark underside of Solomon Water and wondered whether things appeared there in its depths the way they did in the Flame Garden's burning flanks. Solomon Water was rumored to be deeper than the sky was high, home to a whole other Hell of demons like the one that had come ashore the other year. This little thing, with its webbed hands and stinking vomit, wouldn't stand a chance against the water's other inhabitants if that was the case, he thought, and he felt a fleeting pang of sorrow for it.

“What did the man look like?” he asked, raising his gun.

“Pale, white,” said the demon again and then something stepped out behind it and spoke.

“Do you consort with demons now, Information Man?”

“Hello, Adam,” said Fool. “Do you need me?”

“God's mercy,” said Balthazar, stepping out from behind Adam, and reached out. His hand glowed briefly and the demon between them simply dropped, its body suddenly limp. As it slumped to the earth, a tiny blue spark circled out of its mouth and rose into the tree branches. Its glow hovered over them for a moment and then it winked out. Something howled in the trees, was cut off abruptly with a noise like fat falling into fire.

Adam nodded at Fool. “You're needed,” he said.

One of the water demons peered out from behind a tree; Balthazar's flame leaped to it, slicing it neatly in two across its torso. It fell to the ground, each part of it tumbling in different directions, and one of the others screamed and then they all appeared, the shadows gathering weight and momentum as they charged.

Heat was suddenly all about Fool, the air filled with the sound of sundering flesh and the stink of steaming blood. Adam came and stood by Fool as the demons fell before the other angel, Balthazar's glow painting the trees in tones of sullen red. One of the demons rolled up to Fool, pulling itself against his legs and shrieking, “Stop! Stop!” It was the old one, which Fool had assumed was the leader of this … what? Family? Group? Tribe? As it clung to him, its claws tearing into the legs of his uniform trousers, its skinless face was tilted back to him. “Please,” it said,
and then Balthazar reached out from the other side of the clearing and sliced its head off.

“Stop,” said Fool. The glow was raging about him now, casting shadows in long, distorted angles, a burning fury with Balthazar at its heart. The flame was a living thing, not a column but a writhing cord that wrapped about the demons as they went from attacking to fleeing.

Trying to flee. The ground was scattered with bodies and parts of bodies, split neatly, severed edges smoking.

“Stop,” said Fool again and turned his gun so that it was pointing at Balthazar.

“Thomas?” said Adam from beside him, the first time he had used his name. “You threaten an angel?”

“No,” said Fool. “I'm not threatening him, I'm instructing him.”

“Instructing him?” The cord of fire, thickening and brighter, curled around a tree. A spurt of steam and liquid appeared, followed a moment later by the dismembered body of a demon.

“As Hell's Information Man, I'm ordering him to stop,” said Fool.

“Ordering me?” asked Balthazar. “You should be thanking me; I saved you. Again.” The red line snapped upward and something fell from the tree above them. It was small, curled into a ball, and its head rolled away from it as it landed.

“From that?” asked Fool. “From them?” He nodded at the demons currently scattering down the slope and back toward the water.

“From being late,” said Adam. He reached up and placed his hand gently on the barrel of Fool's gun, pushing it down. “We have business.”

The air seemed to breathe in, the red glow sucking back into Balthazar, the vast tendril of fire contracting, dancing its way back between the trees and disappearing into the angel's hands. His wings, which Fool hadn't noticed were open, beat once and then folded back in, closing and merging into his back and around his ankles. His chest and belly, muscles perfectly defined through his skin, hitched once and then Balthazar was back to normal, or at least, as normal as an angel ever became.

“You threatened me,” said Balthazar. His voice was soft, conversational.

“No,” said Fool, equally softly, “I instructed you.”

“You forget yourself, human,” said Balthazar. He stepped toward Fool, who didn't move.

“There's nothing to forget,” said Fool. “I'm an Information Man, and I have jurisdiction and there are rules.”

“Indeed,” said Adam. “Rules, and Elevations.”

As ever, more people were Elevated this time than previously, the numbers growing each time until the last, the biggest raising of souls. Despite the deaths that had happened the last time they had gathered, the crowd of the Sorrowful was larger than ever, forming a huge parade leading out of Hell toward the wall and the gateway on the Mount, a solid mass of people waking together. Adam and Elderflower were at its head, followed by a group of about thirteen people to be Elevated, trailed by Fool and Balthazar and then the crowds. The Sorrowful were mostly silent, the odd shout emerging but never gaining company; some of the Sorrowful sang, not loud enough for Fool to hear the words, merely a tune in Hell's afternoon. They had never done that before.

The rhythm of walking was useful, Fool found, in helping him think through where he had been, where he was, where these last few steps along the trail had brought him. It was a trail that he had followed thinking that he was closing in on some grand old demon, but now it turned out that it was a man. It cast a new shadow on what had gone before. The Man's death, for example; how had that been accomplished? The
why
, in some senses, made more sense now: to send Fool to the one place he was almost guaranteed to meet with aggression and hopefully death. Somehow this unknown murderer had torn his way through the parts of the Man that lived in the garden, broken open the wall behind the Man, and then excavated two columns into his back, taken hold of his vinelike flesh, and operated him like a puppet, but how? It must have been fast or surely the Man would have defended himself.

And what about the slaughter of the Aruhlians? How had a single man accomplished that? Maybe there was more than one? A gang? But how could there be more than one?

How could there be even one?

The trails were turning back on themselves, taking him around in circles. Not a demon but not a single man, a group of men working together to do this, which seemed impossible, an impossible thing in a place of impossible things.

The entrance to the tunnel was already glowing, hungry for its new souls. As ever, there was no ceremony, Adam and Elderflower simply standing on either side of the portal and ushering the Elevated in one by one.

The first one stepped into the blue light and took several steps, and with each step pieces of his flesh tore loose, fragmenting away to the edges of the tunnel, strings of shadow like a moving spiderweb forming. Finally, there was a violent blue flash that reminded Fool of the rolling blue light rising from the pandemonium outside Assemblies House. He flinched as the memory caught him and saw Balthazar smile at him.

“Would you really have shot me?” the angel asked.

“Yes, if you hadn't stopped,” said Fool.

“But they were demons, Information Man. Demons, not humans, foul things abhorrent in the sight of God. They deserve worse than they received from me.”

“They are citizens of Hell and have the same right to protection as anyone else here,” said Fool, and was surprised to find that he meant it. “We had traded and they had not attacked me when you killed them. They were innocent.”

“Innocent?” asked Balthazar. “Demons are never innocent. By their very nature, they cannot be.”

“At that point, they had done nothing wrong,” said Fool, wondering why he was being so stubborn and arguing this with Balthazar. It wasn't the act, exactly; Fool had no love for the demons, for any demons, so what then? And then he understood.

“You interfered with my investigation. I was still talking to them.”

“They lie,” said Balthazar dismissively. “Whatever information you received would have been tainted, corrupted. Only angels are creatures of truth, Fool, angels and that which made them, the God above us.” Balthazar glanced skyward, Heavenward, and then back at Fool. Around them the crowd shuffled, gazing at the pulsating light coming from the wall.

Another person was Elevated, then another, flensed apart by the light, their souls expanding, soaking into the stone. As each vanished, the Sorrowful made their cumulative, lingering
aaaaah
, the sound falling somewhere between awe and misery.

“Do you still hope to solve these killings?” asked Balthazar.

“Yes,” replied Fool.

“Hell does not lend itself to solutions,” said Balthazar. “I'm sure Adam could explain it better than I, but ultimately this is Hell, Fool, and it should be a place of no solutions, of misery and fear and pain and uncertainty. That being the case, why should you be able to accomplish this?”

“Maybe God will help me?” asked Fool and then found his neck burning. Balthazar had moved too fast to be seen, was pressed against him, and his flames were wrapped around Fool's throat, not touching but close enough to be painful. He smelled charring material and wondered whether the collar of his uniform was burning or merely smoldering.

“God works here through us alone, human,” said Balthazar in a vicious hiss. “Through Adam and through me and the scribe and the archive. You are one of the cursed, and in years gone you'd have been one of the burning men, chained to a rock or swimming through a lake of fire until your sin was scorched from you and we decided that you were set free. All these meetings and deals and names traded? They aren't Heaven and Hell, little man, not nearly.” There was a noise like a whip snapping and the heat was jerked away from Fool's neck. He lifted one hand and felt the line of small blisters, felt the heat of them through his fingertips.