Saithorthepyro
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Chapter 9 - Whisper IV
🕑 Added 2025-01-27 16:00:19 +0000 UTCDonald Tyler toppled backwards, black fire already fading from his hands as he landed on the wood paneling of his floor with a resounding thud. He lay there, unmoving, expression shocked, the only thing out of place the single hole in his head. The echo of his landing reverberated, and I could hear the fireworks outside.
Those little balls of silence didn’t last that long.
In response, Gregory’s hands begin to glow as his eyes flicked quickly between the now-dead Tyler and me. He’d ditched any priestly robes for a nice suit that hung on him fiendishly well. That tailored frock coat in dark blue fit him very well, and he had put on some muscle since last we met, shoulders just a bit broader, filling it out-
Damnations, focus on how he apparently had enough money to see a tailor after building muscle Malvia, not the muscle itself!
“Gregory,” I said calmly. “We’ve had our recent disagreements, but before you do anything rash-”
“You shot him!” he exclaimed, eyes wary as Melissa took a position behind me. “You’re talking about me doing something rash?”
“He was channeling Diabolism,” I said. “And also, you should see his cellar before we start a fight. Melissa, back off.”
She sneered at me. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“Fine. Gregory, would you mine helping me beat some sense into Melissa? Do either of you want to fight? Start a brawl sure to attract attention, including Holmsteader? Or can we all take a breath, act like intelligent ladies and gentleman, and show Gregory exactly why I shot Mr. Tyler right between the eyes?”
“What so you can trick me down into an isolated-“
“He could kill both of us with a gesture, why are you letting him-“
“Quiet!” I snapped, and both of them actually went silent. “Gregory, I am not trying to trap you, you need to come down and look at this. Right. Now.”
A pause, both of them eyeing each other then me, then Gregory nodded.
“Don’t mind the light,” he said, one of his hands glowing with an luminescence that hurt to look at. “Just..insurance.”
I couldn’t begrudge him that, and so we went down the stairs, him at the back despite Melissa’s protests.
By the time we reached the bottom, Gregory’s face paled and the light winked out. He stumbled, but steadied himself as he stared across the blood-soaked cellar.
“How many?” Gregory asked, face milk white as he tried, and failed, to find a place to look that didn’t contain the dead. He looked like he was about to puke, and Melissa didn’t look much better.
Honestly, the lack of anything to eat helped me. The stench was awful, tying my stomach into knows. The sheer amount of death didn’t help either.
“Dozens,” I said. “Talking with those who he oversaw at the casinos? I can’t say how many he picked off, only that he eventually ran out of loners and those who wouldn’t be missed. Started tracking those who kept to groups, which meant he was probably approaching his endgame. Either that, or his desire for more outgrew his caution. Maybe. Get away with something long enough, you begin to think you are invincible.”
One would think the third time down here would have made this easier, but instead the twisting in my gut felt worse as I walked into this abattoir for a third time. Looking at the plethora of butchered bodies around, and then at the tools, it was too easy to imagine how he must have carved them up.
My hand, shaking, put the sawblade to where the shoulder met the bicep.
“Enough stalling,” Daver rasped next to me, the smell of whiskey still on his breath. “Bad enough we gotta start with the dead ones because your hand shakes too much on the live ones. So stop shaking and start sawing.”
I breathed in heavily, looking at the body in front of me. Don’t look at the face. Anywhere but there. Pieter, why?
“Child, I’ve been about as patient with you as I can. I get you knew this one, but it’s meat. By now his soul has left. All that’s left is flesh. Be glad the boss only demanded the body be used after instead of both.”
I hesitantly pulled on the saw, wincing as teeth carved into flesh, blood leaking out on either side. I’d cut before, but only when some Watch officer tried grabbing me or someone else came after me for my stuff or the hut me and mother lived in. This…this was…
“Child, he’s mad enough as is. Betrayal bites deep. Makes him bleed his anger, when one of his own turns, no matter the rank. Best not to cut him any more today.”
I shuddered, then put my effort behind my next stroke with the saw, teeth biting deep, shredding skin and muscle underneath, fibers parting as sharp teeth cut through them. Then again, and again, and again till I reached bone and -
“Malvia?”
The memory pierced by that word, I looked over at Gregory, who has moved to the central metal circle. I…it had been forever since I’d thought of that, those early days and learning to be more careful of what I showed.
“Yes?” I asked Gregory, who was frowning as he looked down at the central circle.
“How did you find this place?” He asked, walking around while avoiding any of the many, many body parts littering the ground.
“Part of it was help from us,” Melissa said before I had a chance to say anything. “The Black Flame-“
“Did nothing but watch and take notice,” I interrupted her, and her grin turned to a scowl. “Versalicci told me about people disappearing, and with what was happening I decided to look into it. I did not expect to find this. This must have been happening for weeks, like I said before. What he was trying to do is unknown, but I can take a guess.”
The strange sewn-together corpses were still on display. I hadn’t uncovered the three other ones yet.
“You shouldn’t have shot him,” Gregory said as color returned to his face. “We should have interrogated him, kept him alive so we could find out if he had killed Father Reginald-“
“Tyler worked at night,” I interrupted. “That’s easy enough to find out if he was working the night Father Reginald was killed. And I shot him because otherwise it would be three Diabolists and a divine caster throwing spells at each other in a single room right next to Gleam Street. Infernal corruption, Holmsteader’s people coming down on top of us, and one of us might have hurt each other. Hells, he probably already planned on killing you if he could get away with it. At a bare minimum, if you’d found your way through the illusion on the door? You’d have your body parts strewn among those here.”
Gregory shuddered. “The kind of mind to dissect so many.”
“Could be worse, they could have been alive,” Melissa commented.
“How do you know they didn’t?” He replied.
A shrieking wail as I sawed, the arm straining against metal cuffs as I hurried as fast as I could.
I couldn’t ignore it, but I couldn’t cry either, not as the shriek came again, mixed with pleas for mercy and a swift death cut off by Govlar’s boot to their face.
“Hellsdamned Coppers. Hurry up, we need all four limbs off before he dies! You better be ready to keep him breathing Daver.”
“They might have,” I admitted, trying to keep my mind on something besides the memory. “Struggling, living souls are…more valuable for certain tasks, for lack of a better term. Not necessarily for deals, but for other things..”
My eyes wandered to the sewn together construct of severed body parts.
The joined together faces of Pieter and the Watch officers bulged, something else pressing against their skulls. Something not them pushed forward, wearing their skins as it stretched, skin splitting and stretching. Claws tore their way through, forcing it’s way out of their bodies.
I forced myself out of the past. I was in the here and now, not back then, and more importantly, I had two people to deal with.
If I had either of these two look through this with me, too much of a chance that they would try to keep evidence for themselves, and besides, I had something else in mind.
I pulled the wooden box from within my jacket while they examined the altar, quickly withdrawing the cloth and the two remaining glass balls from within.
“Tell me, do any of those symbols in the metal look familiar?” I asked.
As soon as both peered down, I flung both balls and quickly pressed the handkerchief to my face.
The two turned as the glass shattered, but all that meant was that they landed in the mess of severed limbs instead of on the metal circle. I kept the cloth pressed against my face for a full minute, waiting til well past any spores should have disintegrated before breathing unfiltered air.
I stumbled a little bit, a little woozy, although that might just be full exposure the rotting stench. Tyler must have done something to alleviate the stench, since I doubted even he would have been able to stand this without passing out.
Well, now I had two more things to put onto Jones’ wagon. And I’d have to puzzle out a plan for them once I had them both back at my shop. I did not really have secure places to hold them.
First, though, finish the investigation here, then head back. Tyler heading home early might be just the break-in pattern for one of his colleagues to check on him. Luckily, only a few points of interest to check. It was entirely possible there was a hidden compartment somewhere in here, but I did not have time to check.
I opened my eyes to the astral, and the room changed.
The Astral was a land of metaphors when it came to things besides cast defined spells. Everything else was symbolic, things you had to takes guesses at. Not what they appeared to be.
I was having to remind myself of that as the flesh coating every surface in the room blinked at me with large, bloodshot eyes the size of my fist, maws opening to gasp for air all around me.
Not realy. Just a reflection of this room which…well, it was more lively than I expected, but it could just be devils trying to peer in on this. They could observe even from the Hells, and traces of that could be found on the astral. Luckily they couldn’t do anything more than that.
Strangely, the circle itself? Not changed at all? Oh, there was something underneath, pushing against the metal, lifting it, but it always overwhelmed them and came back down.
Souls, gathered, and stored, but not used yet. That or this was more abstract than I suspected.
I took a tentative step closer, and the metal surface bulged once more. Stretching like it was made of cloth instead of metal, something pressed from underneath. The surface remained unbroken though, and with a blink it returned to just a circle, the nightmarish images from the arcane layer vanishing.
“Now for where we left off before we were interrupted,” I said to the empty air. “The summoning circle. This configuration isn’t like any I’ve learned, so I’d appreciate your insight on it?”
The Imp’s quiet over all of this did not go unnoticed, and I wasn’t sure if it was doing me a favor by being quiet or just being lazy. It had been a while since I’d eaten a cow.
It’s a very intensive circle, The Imp informed me. The reason it was never taught is that Versalicci, that incompetent ram, preferred simple, workmanlike approaches to Diabolism. Nothing fancy, nothing embellished. No sacrificing half a hundred virgins to summon a baron of the hells, no, let’s just slit the throats of a half dozen watchmen for lesser creatures.
I rolled my eyes. Versalicci, against embellishment and showmanship? Perhaps when too much pragmatism was being sacrificed for it. Like the fact that Barons were by their nature harder to hide than lesser devils. Also finding half a hundred virgins would require grabbing people off the streets, and it would be harder to sell those deaths along with his pretense of being a revolutionary instead of someone out for personal gain.
“There’s always more what that came from,” Golvar said to me, then I felt his hand grab my head.
I’d been looking at the ground, trying not to look at the bleeding mess in front, the still moving stumps as Daver prepared the parts I’d sawed off Pieter.
I can feel you rolling your eyes, child, The Imp said in exasperation. It is the truth. This man clearly aimed for higher power, and has been feeding souls into this circle over time, likely in preparation for something.
“I get the feeling if it was for a summoning, he would have used it beforehand,” I said, shaking myself out of the memory. Why now? “Yet, looking at this, it does not appear to have been used at all. And he doesn’t seem very picky about the souls.”
There was very little that seemed shared among the body parts strewn about. Well, outside of their race, but that might just be the fact that his main targets were the poor Infernals in the areas surrounding Glee Street.
He does not seem, The Imp admitted. It is entirely possible he is simply storing over time, saving them up-
“Foolish,” I said. “Sure, most of those he killed wouldn’t be missed, but that’s if he did it in moderation. He has not done that. And storing angry souls on this scale without using them? For what must have been weeks? This is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off-”
‘Tis not The Imp interrupted me. These souls are already destined to the Hells, and are stuck to a device attuned to it. If it were destroyed, or if they channeled their collective anger to free themselves in an attempt to him harm? The Hells’ claim would take priority, and drag them down to it
Hrrm. Still seemed quite the risk. He had no use for them before this? Something didn’t sit right about the sheer number of souls trapped under that circle.
“Well,” I said. “Just leaving it here seems unwise. While I doubt Holmsteader wants to branch into the Diabolic, it would be-”
Just leave it, The Imp said.
Irritably, I had to acknowledge the imp had a point. Handling this without risking a diabolic mishap from all the souls stored in it would take time. Time I did not have as I moved onto the desk.
Interesting that no one from Intelligence had popped up tonight. Either they weren’t observing me as closely as suspected, or they were treating this all with a very light hand. Probably the latter.
I went to the desk, deciding it would be easier to just clear it out then to bother going through all of the papers tonight. I needed to clear out of here before someone happened to notice the missing window.
I gathered all the papers up, taking a drawer from the desk and pressing down until they all fit inside. Alright, upstairs to get Marat and see if Jones had brought his wagon yet.
Getting to the roof, I pulled my gun out, then after handling some swift business, opened the front door and called out for Marat.
She entered cautiously, eyes nervously darting about.
“Any more problems happen?” she asked me. “Heard a bunch of gunshots just a second ago?”
“It’s fine,” I said serenely. “Had some complications. Two living bodies we’ll need loaded in the wagon.”
She seemed a bit off-put, especially looking down at the body.
“Can barely tell it’s him. More holes than face now. How many bullets did you put into him?”
I quelled a flash of irritation before it could show. “Ignore that. I have two live people, and some documents, and some miscellaneous equipment to load onto the wagon. Will it all fit?”
“Sure, sure,” Marat said. “Calm down a bit. This one had you riled up, did he?”
“You might say that.”
Marat looked at Donald Tyler’s corpse.
“What do you want to do with that?”
I considered the bullet-ridden corpse. The temptation to attach it the wagon and let it draf behind us was there, just to take the evidence away. But no. No.
"Toss it below with the rest.”
Comments
UnderwhelmingBird
Poor thing, made the mistake of trying to make the experience more tolerable, and it tugged at the seams of sewn up memories. Turns out the mind makes its own sympathetic connections, not just magic, heh.
