The Music of Razors (13 page)

“So you never went back to Boston.”

“I plan to,” Dorian admitted, replacing his glass on the sill. “I always go back to the places I’ve been. See what’s become of the things I’ve left behind.” Henry finished his drink. “So they never caught up with you, then?”

“Who?” Henry immediately regretted the reflexive way it came out.

“The people in your home state. Before you came to school.”

“I lost contact with my parents,” he lied.

“I don’t mean your parents,” Dorian said. “I mean the constabulary.” He leaned forward, cigarette hanging from two fingers. “Bernard Sumner? Good Christian man? Something of a chip on his shoulder about you and—”

“Why did you leave like that?”

“It was for the best,” Dorian said.

“I had to leave Boston, you know.”

Dorian nodded to himself. “I expected as much.”

“Came looking for you.”

Dorian nodded at that, too. “You got close a few times.”

Henry clamped his eyes shut, felt his teeth grind.

“Couldn’t let you find me, old sport. It wasn’t right.”

“‘Right’?”

“We came together, all five of us—well, four, if you discount Jukes—at that time because we needed to. That time passed, the need was satisfied.”

Henry sat forward in his seat. The statement was a catalyst for anger, and anger was a catalyst for resolve. He breathed, “People died,” like whispering to a sleeper.

Dorian licked his lips, looked back out the window. He bought time in drawing another breath from his cigarette. “To prolong the association,” he said measuredly, “would have been counterproductive. You needed to follow your own way in the world as did I. I told you that would happen from the very first day.”

“What happened to Finella, in the end?”

Smoke drifted halfheartedly out into the still night, made a weak attempt to veil Dorian’s eyes. Somewhere down there, black shapes would be moving low to the ground. Henry thought briefly of Felix, out there with them.

“That’s right,” Dorian said. “You two had a thing.” He drew another breath. “You saw what happened.”

“Answer the question.”

Dorian ground his cigarette out on the sill and tossed the rest of his drink out the window, calling an end to the evening. “You’ve drunk enough.”

In an instant both hands were around Dorian’s neck. Dorian’s head cracked hard against the wall. A sleepy female voice on the other side moaned for them to keep it down.

Dorian was laughing now, as best he was able with fingers closing on his larynx, chestnut hair falling in front of his eyes. His face was flushing, and after a few seconds the smile began to slip.

“What. Did you do. With her.”

Dorian wasn’t saying anything. He was looking into Henry’s rheumy eyes knowing that there was no way Henry could win this, and it was amusing him, despite the pain. He started using sign language and mouthing words, but the faltering smile and the need to laugh kept interfering. He was making slashing motions across his throat. Henry held on for another few seconds, then let go.

Henry stood back, feeling equal parts foolish and furious. It amounted to powerlessness. It felt like old times.

Dorian gasped and dry-retched. It wasn’t an entirely human sound. Henry felt nothing for his discomfort, watching Dorian lurch purple-faced over the end of the bed, as if the solution to his breathing problem were somewhere on the floor and he needed to find it fast.

It took a minute, then Dorian rolled onto his back, head off the edge of the bed, face to the ceiling. He laughed a little, eyes streaming. “Been…waiting ten years for that…I’ll bet.”

“What did you do with her?”

Dorian sat up, coughing still, holding his throat. “I liked Finella,” he rasped. “I really did. More spine than Dysart and Jukes put together. He’s the one who spoke to the authorities in the end, you know. Jukes.”

Henry moved toward him.

“Yes, yes.” The Englishman sat up impatiently, ran a hand through his tousled hair. “Sit down.” He coughed a few times.

Henry remained standing.

“Sit. It’ll take some explaining.”

Slowly, patiently, Henry took his seat.

Dorian sighed, heavily. “This…this has weighed on me for some time, my friend. I’m…I’m glad we’ve got this chance to—”

“Get to it.”

“It always bothered me that you never knew we were fucking.”

Henry had decided on this before entering the room. He produced it, placed it on the table. A scalpel of polished surgical steel.

Dorian considered it for a moment, feeling his pocket for another cigarillo—apparently weighing his limited options—and found his pocket empty. Dorian took his eyes from the instrument, raising his hands resignedly. “We weren’t fucking.”

Caramel hair came to him. The paleness of her forehead, the shape of an ear…and then…nothing. She left. Retreated once more. Henry smiled at the vanishing, felt his eyes burn.

“I know,” he murmured, but not to the man across from him.

It didn’t matter. There were only a few moves waiting to be played out, and the ending was a foregone conclusion. But he needed to hear Dorian say it. There were words without which he could do nothing.

Henry stood and, in passing, took the scalpel from the desk.

Dorian sighed sadly, his eyes back to the ceiling. “I found it, you know.” His gaze lolled over. “What I was looking for. If you knew what it was you’d see it was all worth it. That a hundred times what we paid was worth it.”

There was something to Dorian then. The mask, the costume, the perfume of the character he played were gone. Henry had never seen that before.

“What did you find?”

Dorian shook his head. “Not after all I’ve done. I’m not giving it away. It’s mine.” He looked at Henry without turning his head. “I was a fool to continue traveling alone. You’d
never
have been able to do this otherwise.” He swallowed. “You can’t kill me here. You’ll destroy far more than the man sitting before you.”

Henry closed his eyes. Opened them. “What did you do with her.”

“I’ve a daughter, you know.”

“What…”

Dorian struggled forward, stood up, red-faced. The smallness of the room, the proximity of bed and desk, brought them toe-to-toe. “To hell with Finella! This is more important than bloody fucking Finella!”

Henry pushed gently, and Dorian sat back on the bed. “Does it have a name, this thing you found?”

Dorian surprised Henry by suddenly laughing, loud and shrill. And then, just as quickly, “No! It has nothing!
That’s why it was so bloody hard to find, Henry!
”

“That’s why she died.”

Dorian shook his head. “The redheaded farm boy I knew in Boston wouldn’t have done this. Where’s the quiet old Henry I used to know, eh?” Dorian closed his eyes then, slumped into himself. Let out one heavy breath as if realizing a sudden truth. Looked as if he might weep with exhaustion. “God’s wounds…this is why it stopped speaking to me. You were coming.”

“Open your suitcase.”

Dorian balked. “Look—”

“Open your suitcase, Dorian.”

Dorian would have felt something, slight impact perhaps. Blood was in his eyes before he felt the sting. The scalpel opened a gash just above his left eyebrow. He shouted, recoiled, palming his face, hands coming away bloody. Henry had a knee on his chest before Dorian could call for help, pinning the Englishman to the bed, helpless as a moth.

Henry’s tone was matter-of-fact. “This is a small town, Dorian. There’s no sheriff, no marshal, no judge, and we’re all friends.”

Dorian looked up, wet red hands gripping Henry’s knee, blinking furiously as blood sheeted relentlessly into his left eye. He nodded.

Henry stood back. Dorian took a second to wipe his face and eyes, put a hand to the cut, then reached down to retrieve the case. He paused, meeting Henry’s eye, an appeal to reason.

“Look…”

“Open it.”

It was held together by a great leather belt. Unfastening the brass buckle, Dorian slid it off, lifted the lid. Inside was a change of clothes, a book, shaving kit, drawstring bag.

“Satisfied?”

“Take out the shirts.”

Reluctantly, and with new heaviness, Dorian reached over and removed the clothes. Lying beneath was a wide leather-bound journal. Fastened to it in leather slips lay what Henry had expected, yet somehow couldn’t accept. There lay three artifacts, radiating more light than they received. Like the one inside Felix. Dorian took a handkerchief from the top of the pile, pressed it to his forehead. Henry noticed a little blood had fallen to the sheets. That would have to be taken care of.

He put the scalpel back inside his coat. “What did you do with her?”

“We had to get away. We wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t been done.”

Henry waited.

“It bought us time!”

Henry delivered his final line. “What did?”

The Englishman looked to the ceiling. It seemed to open the passage of his throat, let out all the air he contained. His voice was distant, tired, sad.

Dorian swallowed, voice damp. “I took her head. You know that.”

To Henry it felt as if he were inside his own chest, looking up at the vaulted proscenium of ribs and sternum, and—as though breath were leaving him forever—watching it all collapse.

Dorian raised his eyes, closed them, and lowered his face into his hands.

And there she was, standing amid it all, clear as the day they had first met.

Felix stood by the desk, looking at the body. Henry had closed the eyes, cleaned the blood from Dorian’s face, arranged him with a little dignity.

“How did you do it?”

“Strangled him. I think.”

“You saw the instruments?”

Henry nodded.

“He was a bad man, Doctor.”

“I’m going to read his journals.”

Felix surveyed the contents of the suitcase, licked his lips. “I do not advise it.”

Henry smiled, half to himself. “Figure there’s nothing to lose.”

“You have your life.”

“Like I said.” Outside the window the sky was lightening. “Everything that’s gone before ties up here. It isn’t much of a life as it is. The least I can do is find out what it was traded for.”

Again Felix looked at the three instruments. “There are more,” he said. “More tools. Not here. He…kept them elsewhere. He had servants to retrieve them, as needed.”

Henry plucked what associations he could from memory. He remembered a leopard asleep on a circle of fresh green grass. The stench of tulips and roses. He remembered Dorian crying out the six names of God. “The Fallen?”

Felix shook his head. “No. He was never that strong. These are servants he made himself—”
I was a fool to continue traveling alone,
he’d said. “—with those instruments, and others like them.” Their light was mesmerizing.

Henry considered his options. Then: “We need to get him out of here.”

“The owner is downstairs.”

With the coming of dawn the night remained still. Henry watched a stray coyote trip curiously down the center of the street, lean and grayish and canny. It looked back over its shoulder once, and was gone. Disappeared beyond the open window.

As would Dorian.

Dorian had been raised as a child-medium by a very traditional Polish mother. His birth name had been Johannes Paole. He had never known childhood. He had remained within the four walls of the family home until he had reached puberty, and become valueless as an oracle. The manner of Dorian’s death filled Henry with sadness.

The one inescapable impression Dorian had formed during a childhood of constant isolation and fractured schooling had been this: that something was wrong. That there was an indefinable gap in the weave of history and theology. Something was missing.

Years later in Mexico he had formed a new cabal and perceived that absence, that tear in theology, provided context for the nonexistent and pulled something into being.

Seventy-two angels fell with Samael…

As an angel is created it is gifted a function, portfolio, responsibilities. The angel charged with the assigning of power and function was a powerful angel indeed…

Henry stopped reading. Dawn was approaching. The cabin was filled with the reek of burning lantern oil. Felix was on his bunk, as usual, watching him over hugged knees, waiting for him to finish. His angular face and hawkish eyes gave him an eternal air of pensiveness, of waiting for something to happen.

“You were part of this cadre?” Henry asked.

Felix nodded.

“Yes.”

Henry swallowed. “Get me some water, would you?”

Felix got up and retrieved the pitcher from near the potbellied stove. He filled a steel tankard and brought it to Henry’s desk.

“Thank you.” Henry drank quietly. When he stopped he pursed his lips, licked them. “What did it look like, the angel?”

“It has no appearance,” the Frenchman said. “An angel does not die,
oui
? It is eternal, an aspect of Godhead. But this angel, you see, was very, very close to killed, yes? As it is possible to make. Everything was taken from it: name, sigil, responsibilities, power, form…even the knowing of its existence was taken away. It had not been thought of since before the Earth was new.”

Henry held up a cautious hand. “Then how did Dorian find this thing?”

“The journal tells you,
Docteur.
The angel is all but destroyed, but it is not destroyed, yes? It has almost no ability, yet some ability remains. It could not make itself known or remembered. But it did so. Very slowly, over years, it nurtures a small suspicion in the mind of one boy, a boy used as an oracle, yes? By his mother and her clients. A boy who has no contact with other people; a boy whose mind had been turned inside out, to things abstract, intuitive…occult. All this and nothing else.”

“Dorian.”

“Of course.”

“How did he manage it?”

“He was mad. He followed trails that do not exist, still do not exist, but exist for him. In much the same way as he heard the angel’s voice from the moment of his discovering it to you squeezing the last breath from him.”

“I don’t understand.”