Heartbreaker Read online

  The few information he was able to gather, over a period of time he found incredibly long and fruitless, concerned a certain Wilton Grange, who many had defined a ruthless and amoral man – description that from Shim’s point of view fitted almost any necromancer – who wouldn't hesitate to make such a show of his power. The same people, though, said he had never been that powerful.

  Shim decided it was still worth paying him a visit, fighting all the time against the impulse to just ask if he happened to be there.

  He used his communication crystal to inform Krey that he was leaving and tell him to meet him at the door. He was about to shed the cloak and go out when Vivienne suddenly appeared in front of him as if she had always been there and somehow he hadn't noticed her till then.

  «Did you find out anything detective?» she asked sweetly.

  «Maybe», he replied drily.

  «I am glad to hear that. I suppose you would be wanting to go and find Grange.»

  This time Shim didn't even try to look surprised. «You knew they would mention him to me, didn't you?»

  «You credit me with too many abilities I do not possess, detective. I have simply supposed that they had mentioned it to you the same way they mentioned it to me this very night. Personally I have never had the dubious pleasure to meet him, but I have come to know the place in which he resides, and it might pleasure you to know that it is not very afar from here.»

  «Fine, then tell me where it is and we will part.»

  «You are not thinking of going there alone?»

  «I'm not alone. And that's none of your concern anyway.»

  «It is true, it is no concern of mine if tomorrow someone will find your body without the heart inside. Nonetheless I would consider that unpleasant, not to say useless for our scopes.»

  «Yours and who else’s?»

  «Yours, of course, detective. We might have different motives, but we both aim to achieve the same result.»

  This, Shim thought, was yet to be proved.

  «I will lead you to his mansion, then you will proceed on your own if so you will wish.»

  The dwarf shrugged. He didn't think he could prevent her from leading them anyway, and he didn't want to waste any time trying.

  The house of Wilton Grange, or the place Vivienne indicated as such, ended up being quite near indeed. It was in a fairly secluded neighborhood, made up by short buildings which had done their best to resist the fury of the hurricane which had swept the city a few days ago, and found out their best just wasn't enough. None of them had really suffered serious structural damages, but all had been damaged and needed at least a bit of maintenance, at best.

  The one to which the woman led the two agents was a small villa facing the street. No light came from the bare windows, it looked deserted.

  Vivienne advanced to the door, she put the palm of one hand against it and slightly tilted her neck backwards, as if to follow a strange smell no one else could perceive.

  «I believe that you should go inside», she said.

  «We should come back tomorrow», Shim replied. «It would already be a problem to wake someone up in the middle of the night just because some people I don't know didn't talk well about him... breaking in is out of the question.»

  «Maybe... we should go in». Krey had approached one of the windows while the other two were talking, and had tried to look inside, unhindered by the utter lack of light in the building.

  Shim gave him a quizzical look.

  «There are bodies inside», the dark elf explained.

  «Let's go in! Call the central, have them send reinforcements». He hadn't even finished talking when he started running toward the door. Just one hit with his shoulder was enough for it to open and hit the wall. Shim took a small crystal obelisk from a pocket and it immediately started glowing a bright white light, lighting the room. It was square, unfurnished, with the exception of an old table against one wall, and in each of the four corners there was a human body. The rotting stench left little doubts concerning the health of those poor people.

  Krey entered in turn, right after wearing sunshades to shield his eyes from the light. Vivienne stood on the door for a little while, apparently unsure. She held one hand in front of her, just like she had done before, and moved it carefully, as if waiting for something to stop her. Her hand went all the way through the door, and she followed with a graceful movement and a surprised look on her face.

  «No one inhabits this place», she said in a whisper.

  «What does that mean?» Shim asked, but instead of Vivienne's answer he heard Krey's voice.

  «Something's wrong, no one is answering at the central.»

  Right then, the corpses in the corners started to stand up slowly.

  Somewhere a bell was tolling its twelfth toll.

  CHAPTER 8

  They started awakening where they had been left.

  At first they were confused. They didn't understand where they were, how they had got there, and most of all they had a strange feeling, something they knew to be wrong although they couldn't understand why it was so, or even what it was.

  Some of them even checked their pocket, victim of the impression they had lost or forgot to take something they needed, though no one could remember what it might be.

  Others went to look at their reflections in the shop windows at the streetlights, and those mirrored their usual faces, their usual looks, maybe a bit more tired and a little less neat than usual, their clothes untidy and even with some leaves on them, but nothing more than that, nothing to sweep doubts away

  Then something came to replace confusion.

  A thought.

  A voice.

  An instinct.

  A command.

  Whatever it was, it gave them a purpose, simple as it was, and at the same time they started moving, from different places, toward a common destination.

  Rupert opened his eyes and found himself in the dark. He knew he was in the dark, as well as he knew that he shouldn't have been able to see anything. What he didn't know was why, on the contrary, he was seeing perfectly.

  He was naked, lying on a hard and stiff surface. It was cold. He knew it was cold without really feeling it, as if it didn't really concern him.

  The ceiling was almost right over him. As if he had been closed into a box, or a casket. That thought should have terrorized him, but he was quiet, and couldn't find an explanation for that.

  He reached out with his hands, touched the ceiling and pushed. The ceiling didn't move. Something under him though, seemed to gave way, to shake.

  He tried to push forward, as if to make the ceiling slide over him. It kept being still. It was him who moved, along with the plank he was laying on. The drawer in which his body had been left opened quietly, allowing him to see the ceiling. The actual one.

  He got up and climbed down to the floor. He looked around and didn't understand what he was seeing. Still he knew what the place was. Or, better, something or someone knew that for him.

  Michael Crew went back to the autopsy room after a short pause and a scalding coffee.

  He wasn't used to work that late at night, but he had spent hours uselessly trying to understand something more from the homeless’ corpse, and that had forced him to delay other things he had to work on.

  When he looked up from his mug and saw in front of him what had been the subject of his work only a few minutes earlier, he was astonished. He wasn't used to see corpses leave the autopsy table and get up as if nothing had happened. And there couldn't be any doubt about the fact that it was a corpse: the Y-cut, albeit sewed-up, was still clearly visible on its chest, even though anyone seeing it now would have thought of some trick, since apart from that the man looked absolutely and undeniably alive and kicking. But he had made that cut and knew far too well how real it was.

  In his career, Michael had had the chance to see some undead beings up close. There were probably many more than he could remember, but all of them had one thing
in common: aside from the fact that they might move, they looked dead. The only ones he knew that could, under the proper conditions, seem alive, where vampires, a category the being standing in front of him – looking at him with empty eyes as if it was trying to decide what to do – for sure didn't belong to. He hadn't found any bite mark on his body, and he had examined it too thoroughly to think he might have missed one; furthermore it hadn't been drained of its blood, so he had none of the characteristics of a vampire victim, neither he had been dead long enough to wake up as such.

  The two stood still, studying each other like opponents at the opposite sides of a boxing ring. Michael felt as if time had frozen for a second, stopping its flow while it waited for his mind and body to be able to communicate with each other again. The spell was broken when he decided to take a step backward, intending to reach the door and call someone who had more expertise on walking corpses. His foot hadn't yet touched the floor when Rupert's hands caught his throat. He hadn't even seen him moving.

  He realized that the undead wasn't choking him as much as holding him, and he tried to say something to talk himself out of that situation, but all he could muster was a strangled moan. Fear had paralyzed his vocal chords more and better than the hands around his neck had.

  His last thought was that nothing of that would have happened if the corpse had been transferred to Owlfeather's care, then his head was ripped away from the body and bounced under a tool tray, while his blood painted the walls.

  Rupert overstepped the body at his feet and walked out into the corridor.

  CHAPTER 9

  Shim turned to the door while trying to keep an eye on the dead bodies who had started approaching. Someway the street outside had filled of walking dead too, coming from the-gods-knew-where, they too in a quite advanced rotting state. Some had only a few flaps of flesh and clothes on their bones – to which only the power of necromancy allowed to stay together and walk as if there were still muscles and tendons allowing their movements.

  «You lead us in a trap!» he grunted to the woman.

  «Not intentionally, detective.»

  The tension of that moment made something click in him, in spite of that being completely out of place and time, and he couldn't help but reply, «Could you please stop calling me detective each time you talk to me?»

  «But you are a detective», she answered with an innocent look on her face. Her voice had the quiet tilt of someone who isn't surrounded by self-moving corpses, or is accustomed to be.

  «I know. And I don't need to be reminded continuously.»

  «As you wish, detective.»

  Shim gave up. There were other things on his mind.

  Fortunately the creatures surrounding them seemed to be simple zombies. They were tenacious and dangerous beings, showing an extraordinary strength not because they were actually stronger as dead than when they were alive, but because there was nothing preventing them from using their full physical abilities. A normal human in some situations was able to use his full potential – such as the proverbial mother lifting a heavy beam to free her son trapped under it – though they had to suffer the consequences once the adrenaline rush wore off. Muscles strained too much got damaged, the same way they did on a smaller scale each time they were put to the test in a gym, although damages healed over time, making them even stronger and more resistant. But a zombie felt no pain, didn't realize muscles strain, it was able to push his body to the upper limits and beyond at any time. This way it usually caused itself irreparable damages, as it was no longer able to heal, and sooner or later it ended up self-destroying, but usually in the meantime it had accomplished the task it had been created for.

  In spite of all this, there was still a good side of facing zombies: they were slow. Once they reached you, you had to worry, seriously, but as long as they were out of reach you had all the time for planning. In the open and in small packs they weren't even a true menace. In an enclosed space and in large numbers, as it was the case, they were deadly. Standard stunning weapons used by police were useless against undead, of whatever flavor they were. Shim knew that well, and he also knew well that, while investigating on something that involved necromancy, it wasn't unlikely to end up facing that kind of creatures. That was why he had gone prepared.

  He removed from his belt a slender metal wand of an opaque bronze color, letting the light crystal fall on the floor, and aimed it to one of the zombies coming from the opposite side of the room. A dark projectile, surrounded by a fiery aura, popped out of thin air and was hurled at incredible speed against the creature, hitting it in the middle of its forehead. The back of its skull exploded in a thousand of bone shards, blood spurts and lumps of cerebral matter, staining the wall behind. The zombie didn't seem to care and kept walking, steering just a bit from its original course.

  When a second projectile hit its right knee, making it fall and almost shearing its whole joint away, it just fell face first and started crawling on its arms, its left leg and what was left of the right one.

  The other zombies were getting closer by then.

  Shim gave its wand to Krey, who had had no time nor chance to get a similar weapon. He took it with an unsure look. «And you?»

  «I'll get by», he replied, while starting to run in the direction of the crawling zombie. «Follow me.»

  He reached the undead and walked on it, caring to stay out of the reach of the hands trying to grab him, then he went to the table, and upturned it so to create a sort of barrier, albeit weak, between him and the advancing cadavers.

  While Krey and Vivienne reached him, the former trying to delay the zombies as much as possible with his wand, the latter as if she was strolling through the park in the moonlight, he used his weight to break one of the legs of the table, so to use it as an impromptu weapon. Paradoxically, it could prove to be more effective than a wand, as the only way to render a zombie harmless was destroying its body so utterly that it could not move anymore, even if that meant shattering most of its bones, or cut it into pieces with something sharp and strong that he really didn't have at present.

  The stream of corpses kept walking toward them, without even looking at them. They looked like a bunch of somnambulists who had for some reason decided to go all in the same direction. Krey's shots delayed them but could not stop them, even the more badly damaged found a way to carry on their inexorable advance.

  Shim took his communication crystal and tried to contact the central, getting no answer from them. That wasn't a good omen at all, and he would worry about that if he hadn't had in front of him some twenty undead willing to eat him, or dismember him, or whatever zombies did to their victims.

  «You're a necromancer! Can't you stop them somehow?» he almost shouted to Vivienne, who still wasn't showing the faintest trace of worry on her face. If anything, she seemed thoroughly bored by the whole situation.

  «I would violate the law if I used necromancy», she answered. At least she didn't add "detective".

  «I'm willing to turn a blind eye on that», he replied sarcastically.

  «I am glad to hear this.»

  Vivienne straightened in all of her height, taking a statuary pose that someway made her look more powerful, as if she had just shed away the aristocratic look to wear a cloak of a totally different nature. She opened her head, with her palms lifted and her fingers slightly bent, then pushed them in front of her, slightly opening her arms, with her elbows pressed against her hips, and looked up at the creatures.

  Apparently nothing happened, but it was as if an invisible vibration radiated from her body, expanding in front of her like an untouchable but undeniable wave of power.

  Two of the zombies started stumbling, or at least stumbling more than they already did, then fell on the floor, lifeless. Nothing else happened. The remaining zombies ignored the fallen ones and kept advancing. Those who had been behind trampled them, or walked over them the same way they would have done with any other nonliving obstacle on their path.

>   «He's... strong...», Vivienne murmured faintly. It was the shortest and less elaborated sentence Shim had heard her say so far. It seemed clear to him that she had done what she could, and it was far from being enough.

  «We have to get out of here», he said in a dry tone, looking around. The main door was impossible to reach, the only way was trough the zombies and they couldn't get there alive. The only remaining way out was a door on the wall behind them. He gestured for Krey to turn that way.

  «Go there, I'll back you up!» he said, moving around the table and going much too close to the undead. He took a deep breath – and immediately regretted it when the stench filled his nostrils – then gripped the table leg with both hands and hit with full strength the legs of the nearest zombie. There was a noise, much like a withered branch snapping, and the creature fell forward. He would have fallen on him if he hadn't backed, at the same time launching a second assault at its head, which flew away like a baseball set to an home run.

  Meanwhile, followed by Vivienne, Krey reached the door. He turned the knob, meeting with no resistance, and pushed, with no result. He was about to shoot to the lock when he realized that the hinges were on his side of the wall. He grabbed the knob again and pulled, stepping back as much as needed.

  A hand closed around his throat. Before he could even try to react, the dry crack of his neck snapping was heard, and his body fell lifeless on the floor.

  Behind the door stood a man, unmoving. His gaze was directed at a point on the opposite wall, or most likely he wasn't actually watching anything. Aside from this detail, there was nothing peculiar in him, he looked like a mere human, and if he hadn't just killed a dark elf using only one hand there wouldn't have been many reason to think otherwise.

  Vivienne stood and looked, astonished, trying to understand what she was seeing.

  Shim didn't care at all about that detail. He had just lost a man and couldn't afford to waste time thinking about what had happened. He turned around and hit the new opponent, with the only result of forcing him to make a step backward. He tried a second time. That was the only passage available, and he had no intention of letting anyone stop them. This time the man grabbed the table leg in midair, making the arms of the dwarf shake, then pushed it back, thrusting it and its owner right in the middle of the zombies.