NOSGOTH NOIR

Author's Note: I apologise for length of time between updates!

See, when I say “fresh” air it’s kind of the same way in which I say “Lord” Escobar. Air around here ain’t fresh. Hasn’t been for years. It stinks, especially near the capital, and after the rain it’s worse, washing all the filth from the pits and the corpses out onto the streets.

You ever try walking down a street after a rainstorm and not getting your heels burnt? Not as easy as it looks, and in this place the rain seems to come all too frequently. Aquile says it’s the way the Dark Gods have of keeping us under control.

I think Aquile needs to do a little more bowing and scraping and a little less thinking, you know what I mean? but the kid ain’t too bright in a specialised kinda way. Bright enough to know why the thunderbolt’s about to scorch his ass, but not bright enough to get out the way.

I push open the door of Aquile’s little pad. Razielim like me don’t knock. If he’s doing anything in there that ain’t quite legal, better I’m the one who gets an eyeful rather than Ithiel and his block-headed friend.

The smell of blood hits me like a slap in the kisser. Blood is so strong a scent it’s practically a visual. With my eyes closed I could see the headless body lying in the corner of Aquile’s room, and the bright, tempting splash of it paints Aquile himself in holiday colours. The kid is knelt over the stiff with his head down, and for a happy minute I just reckon he’s having an early lunch. But my nose isn’t deceived as easily as my eyes. That’s no lunch. That’s murder.

That stiff is a vamp, like us.

“Hells, Aquile,” I say, leaning myself up against the wall as casual as I can and lighting up with claws that tremble just a little. “Never knew you had it in you. Who was that?”

The kid looks up at me. He’s got blood all over his chest, his arms and his head. His hair is clotted with it. I guess I should’ve mentioned it, the odd thing about Aquile that makes him noticeable, but then I don’t like to bring it up. Like I said, I like the kid, and Escobar don’t like exceptions, so we don’t talk about it.

Aquile’s hair is blond. Not white, like the Emperor’s, but yellow, blond, the colour of sand. I’m not saying you don’t get blonds in this neighbourhood, but it’s rare. Lord Raziel’s no blond, and neither are his clan. Generally.

Still, Aquile’s looking more like a bombshell redhead than a blond right about now. His big yellow eyes look kinda glazed, like he’s had a few too many. “Hey,” I say, taking a drag on my smoke. “I’m talking to you, buddy. As a friend. You know what a friend is, Aquile? Someone who doesn’t squeal like a pig when the pressure’s on. Someone who doesn’t spill the beans to Lord Dumah’s heavies about my little sideline. Someone who comes around visiting and doesn‘t throw his toys out the pram over a small thing like a headless stiff on the furnishings, capsice?”

“I didn’t kill him,” says Aquile, and he’s got a quavery note in his voice I don’t like.

See, Ithiel’s not running on a full tank of sanity on good days, but he’s the mean kind of crazy, the sort that’ll pull your fangs out by the roots and let you starve in front of a chained slave. Aquile is also a bit crazy. He’s the yellow kind of crazy, though. The weak, irresponsible kind. He gets scared easier than a human broad in Kain‘s lap. The problem with that kind of crazy is that it’s even harder to predict than Ithiel’s kind of crazy. What would Aquile do, if pushed hard enough and long enough?

What has he done?

“You didn’t kill him? Surprising how many innocent people I find crouched over dead bodies.”

I push off the wall, step in, and crouching over the body press my tongue to the stump of neck.

Dark Gods divided. It’s a Dumahim, for sure. The blood sings on my tongue like sour lemon. Powerful blood, a soldier‘s blood. This ex-vamp was a high-rank, or at least an up-and-coming medium-rank. Not the kind of number you mess with. I flick out my tongue again, taking a clot of dark blood into my mouth so I know I ain’t mistaken. What, you think I’m disgusting? It’s not like I live on it, we have humans for that. It’s, whattya call it, scientific. It’s also the main way I find out things. I got sensitive tastes.

And a sensitive guy like me knows Aquile’s in way over his head if he’s killed a Dumahim soldier in Razielim territory with Lord Raziel taking vacation and Lord Dumah’s stooges sniffing around my office. I turn my fiercest look on little Aquile, who cowers. Good. He may not have half the brain his sire gave him when he got made, but he’s got brain enough to still be cowering-scared and not stupid-brave-scared.

“Now you listen to me,” I growl, “and you’d better listen good, because if you don’t you’ll be kissing your ears goodbye for the last time, you get me? You say you didn’t kill this guy. I believe you. You ain’t got the muscle, Aquile, you ain’t got the stones. But if you don’t tell me the truth about how this all went down, I swear, friend or no friend, I’m gonna drag you out and drop you in the nearest lake.”

And for emphasis, I drop my lit cigarette into the pool of vampire blood at my feet. It makes an expressive little hissing noise, a lot like fssszzt. Smoke spirals up, and Aquile whimpers. His eyes are huge, his pupils tiny dark marks in an expanse of muddy yellow iris like wet clay. For a minute I think he’s out of his skull on something shamanistic, but his scent tells me otherwise. He’s just frightened, and who wouldn’t be?

“I…I found him,” he whispers, eventually. “In the pass…the rocks…I followed the smell of the blood…”

Found him? Dead mid-ranks are not in the habit of turning up like ten-cent pieces in front of low-rank fledges out for an evening stroll. In the capital, after a fight? Sure. But left out in the badlands, with no evidence as to who is now claiming higher rank on grounds of dead vamp’s boots? No way.

“Okay,” I agree, not pressing. For now. “Then here’s one for the win, Aquile. Where is his head?”

Aquile looks me dead in the eye, and a high-pitched whistling sound escapes his pale lips. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s laughing, his fangs exposed, his face twitching. And he raises his clawed hand, pointing upwards to the ceiling. My eye automatically follows.

There’s no dead face grimacing down at me. There’s nothing up there at all, except sub-standard rafters and probably a few mice that I smelt on my way in. I give Aquile the hard eye, but he continues to laugh in that loopy way, so I even go outside and check the roof and eaves for stray heads. Still nothing. Defeated, I go back in, where Aquile’s laughter is really beginning to give me the creeps.

“Up!” he giggles. “His head’s all the way up!”

Did I mention that the other thing Lord Escobar makes Exceptions for is weak clanlings with obvious toys in the attic? Being Aquile’s friend just got a whole lot more dangerous, as if that was possible what with the headless corpse and all…