City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [155]
Randur didn’t understand the concepts or the philosophy, and being made to feel ignorant merely angered him. ‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘We go to Villiren – if it’s still there and we’re not too late – and join a war in which we’ll most likely perish.’
‘Worry not. Rika will come to no harm under my guidance.’ Artemisia placed a hand on Rika’s shoulder. ‘And we will aid the Jamur dynasty, as part of our deal.’
Eir looked disgusted. ‘What did this thing do to you?’
‘She did nothing,’ Rika replied coolly.
‘Last night – I heard you.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, sister.’
‘Look, I think we’re all wondering, did she fuck you last night?’ Randur interrupted. Everyone turned to glower at him, and he could sense their collective rage. He held his hands up, apologetically, knowing that he had been a tad too blunt.
Artemisia towered in front of him, then pushed her way past. A dozen Hanuman spiralled above their heads, and she communicated to them in that guttural language. Then she turned to regard the group of humans, but only Randur was paying her any attention. Eir and Rika stood gazing at each other, the fracture between them painfully clear.
Artemisia announced, ‘We leave immediately.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
They scoured the streets house by house after nightfall, the Bloods, searching for vacant properties or rented accommodation where a Night Guard soldier and a cultist woman might have taken shelter, and all the while a snowstorm was gusting bitterly around them, never settling.
Malum had requested for his gang to embrace their more feral nature. His anger had connected with some deeper, weirder aspect of his vampyrism. They were masked and fuming and filled with purpose. They swaggered. They strutted and hollered out names to women heading home from the bars. They brandished hand-signals to intimidate the other gangs, who were hanging back in the shadows: Come fight us, you cowards. Fuck the Dog Gata Devils. There were stand-offs and mock scraps, name-callings and a sense of belonging. This was a subtle, directionless conflict.
Malum, wearing his surtout and mask and heavy gloves, flashed his blades in the eyes of the hesitant until they whimpered their responses to him.
‘No, we ain’t seen nothing.’
‘Please, we’re just two old sisters.’
‘Fuck you doin’ at this time of night? Oh, it’s you, Malum – I didn’t mean to be rude, I . . .’
He found out where all the slum landlords were located, those who had enjoyed licence from the portreeve to rip off the poor, who possessed no housing rights, and were without provision of firegrain for nights at a time. He beat them up because they were of little help to him, and maybe because they deserved it. One guy Malum decided he particularly despised was even chosen as a blood donor. In the man’s new-built Scarhouse mansion Malum’s gang gleefully ripped into him, punching their teeth into all his major veins and arteries. Malum took a glass from the man’s own drinks cabinet, filled it with fresh blood, before raising it in a toast to his victim’s good health.
*
Fifty gang members in all sifted through the likeliest streets anistricts. They kicked down doors, surprising couples who were rutting like animals; disturbed three old cultists who projected a net of energy into the doorway to block their entry; outraged a disgruntled rumel belonging to the Inquisition who was wearing some terrible-coloured breeches.
The first real clue he got was from a lonely fat tenement owner he caught entertaining himself with a porno golem – Malum vaguely wondered if it might have been supplied by himself: ‘Yeah, they was here, the floor below, about two nights ago, though mainly the woman ’cos the fella keeps slipping off back to the barracks, like. But they only stayed a night.’
‘Where’d they go?’
The man shrugged and meekly pulled the sheets across to try to hide the writhing pink golem as it fell off his bed, its overly made-up lips constantly mouthing coy surprise, touching its clay