The Adventures of Lazarus Gray (9 page)

A girlfriend, Goodwill
mused. There was always the chance she might know something. He’d
have to silence her afterward, though. He couldn’t run the risk of
her talking to the cops or telling anyone about the things he’d be
quizzing her over. He cast one glance over his shouler to make sure
that Sazar was invisible and then he opened the door, reaching out
quickly to grab the girl and yank her inside. "Come in, my
dear."

"Who are you?" she asked,
staring at the ruined apartment in shock.

"I could ask the same of
you."

"My name’s Doris. I’m
Harry’s girlfriend."

"Then I’m sorry for your
loss."

"What are you talking
about? Where’s Harry?"

"My name is Malcolm
Goodwill. Harry might have mentioned me. I’m his employer. Or was,
to be precise."

"Why do you keep talking
like that?" Doris suddenly put a hand over her mouth. "Has
something happened to Harry?"

"He’s dead. I’d imagine if
it were not already in the papers, it will be soon. He was cut up
last night. Had more holes in him than a hunk of Swiss
cheese."

"Oh my god." Doris looked
as if she was about to cry but Goodwill tossed her onto the couch
and her head seemed to clear. She looked around at the apartment,
noticing how it had been rifled through. "What’s going on here?"
she asked.

"Your boyfriend stole
something from me. Eight pages from a very old book. I want them
back. Do you know anything about them?"

"Harry wasn’t much for
reading," Doris said, shaking he head. "I don’t know anything
about… Oh." A strange expression passed over the girl’s face and
Goodwill knew that she had just remembered something.

"Tell me!" he demanded,
raising a hand as if to strike her.

Doris flinched and began to
speak rapidly. "He said something about having seen somethin’ that
he shouldn’t have. Said that he was gonna do somethin’ about it!
That it was time to be a man. But he didn’t tell me any details! I
swear it!"

"But you knew enough to
know it had to do with my papers."

"Yeah. When he was telling
me about it, I saw some old papers on his table. He’d bought a big
envelope to put them in."

Goodwill narrowed his eyes.
"Was he going to mail them to someone?"

"I don’t know.
Honest!"

Goodwill turned away,
seething internally. Had he misjudged Harry? Had the man not been
so stupid as to hold onto the papers himself? He glanced back at
Doris, catching her as she stared longingly at the door. She was
going to either make a break for it or begin screaming soon.
"Sazar," he said and Doris looked at him in confusion.
"Feed."

The spectral form of a nude
woman became visible at his side. Even Doris, as heterosexual as
any girl could be, was forced to silently acknowledge the
loveliness of Sazar’s form. But then Doris let her eyes travel up
the long neck and settle on the horrific visage that was Sazar’s
face. A scream died in her throat and Doris drew back as Sazar
lunged for her.

Goodwill watched for a
moment or two before looking out the window. The sounds of Sazar
lapping at the girl’s spilling blood were nauseating.

Down below, he saw a black
sedan pull to a halt in front of the building and two men emerge.
One of them was very familiar to Goodwill, as he was to almost any
citizen of Sovereign: Lazarus Gray, whose grim features were
regularly depicted in newspaper photographs. As leader of
Assistance Unlimited, Gray was a constant thorn in the side of the
underworld.

Goodwill waited until Gray
and Morgan had entered the building and then he yanked opened the
window. The fire escape lay below and he nimbly swung his legs down
onto it. The metal structure was slick from the morning rain but
Goodwill held his balance well. Looking back into Harry’s
apartment, he said, "Sazar, there’s two men coming up. When they
get here, please take care of them and then come back to the house.
Understood?"

Sazar looked up at him and
grinned. Blood dripped from her chin in copious amounts and she
allowed one hand to paw at the dead girl’s breast. Feeding always
stirred her passions to dangerous levels. "I’ll devour their
hearts," she swore.

Goodwill said nothing,
descending the fire escape in silence. The arrival of Gray might be
nothing more than coincidence but he didn’t really believe in
chance. If Gray was here… and Harry had planned to send the pages
to someone… then it all added together that he might have sent them
to Assistance Unlimited. Everybody knew the group was housed on
Robeson Avenue and Goodwill suddenly realized that if Gray were
here, then the place might be abandoned for the moment.

Grinning, Goodwill moved to
his car and slid behind the wheel. Perhaps, he mused, things might
work out after all.

***

"So tell me again how you
know it was Harry who sent us the papers?"

Lazarus Gray took the steps
two at a time, forcing Morgan to hurry in his attempt to keep up.
Morgan was a slender and fairly athletic man but he was in his
forties and had enjoyed life to the fullest. His words were
punctuated by gasps between nearly every word.

"I took the liberty of
calling Sovereign Office Supply. Envelopes of that size aren’t
particularly common. They remembered a man coming in a few days
ago, wanting to purchase a single envelope. Most of the time,
buyers purchase them in packs of 5-10. The man’s name was Harry
Nance. The manager of Sovereign Office Supply knew him because
Nance’s girlfriend worked at the diner next door."

"And now we’re gonna see if
we can get him to talk?"

"I’m afraid it won’t be
that easy." Gray reached into one of his pants pockets and pulled
out the morning paper, which was rolled up. "I grabbed this on the
way out of the office. Notice anything on the front
page?"

Morgan slowed to a stop,
grateful to have the opportunity to catch his breath. He saw only a
few items of interest: The Monster, one of the leaders in the
Sovereign underworld scene, was still Public Enemy Number One
according to the police chief and an unidentified man was found
hacked to death in the early hours of the morning. "I don’t get
it," he admitted at last.

"I’m fairly certain that
the dead man is Harry Nance." Morgan looked at his employer
expectantly and Gray continued, "The murder took place down the
block from a mail box. The postal stamp on the envelope shows that
it was picked up at mail box # 5, which coincides with that street.
I reason that he was murdered immediately after placing the
envelope in the mail chute."

The two men resumed their
trek upstairs, not taking much interest in the dingy surroundings.
Harry had lived in one of the more squalid areas of town and the
building stank of mildew and rat droppings. It was a far cry from
the relative opulence of the Assistance Unlimited headquarters and
reminded Morgan that it wasn’t so long ago that he was much like
Harry Nance: a man down on his luck with no obvious prospects. A
chance encounter with Lazarus Gray had caused him to reevaluate his
position in life and he’d soon traded a life of crime for one of
decency and hard work.

Gray stopped outside Harry
Nance’s apartment, a strange look on his face. He held up a hand,
indicating that he wanted silence from Morgan. He pointed to the
dusty floor, where nearly a dozen footprints could be seen. One
set, the most recent from the looks of them, belonged to a woman in
heels.

Lazarus knelt in front of
the keyhole and placed his eye up close. At first all he could see
was a room in ruins, with papers and cushions overturned. But then
he saw a red pool on the floor, along with the legs belonging to
Doris. He stood up quickly and took a step back. He then threw his
shoulder against the door, which popped open with a crash. Morgan
had drawn his pistol as soon as he’d sensed Gray’s intentions and
he followed his employer into the apartment, scanning for any signs
of threat. He was the first to lay eyes upon Sazar. The demon was
stepping toward him from his left, her arms outstretched. Her nude
body immediately caught his gaze and held it but his eyes
inevitably traveled up and his breath seized in his
chest.

"Chief? We’ve got trouble,"
Morgan wheezed.

Gray, who had been moving
to check on Doris, whirled about. His eyes widened at the sight
before him and he immediately sprang into action. Sazar was hissing
like a cat, one that was hungry for blood. Gray slammed into her,
the impact crashing them both into the wall, shattering the
plaster. Sazar craned her neck, trying to bury her fangs in his
throat but he was able to hold her at bay with his mighty
strength.

Morgan raised his gun but
was too afraid of hitting Gray to pull the trigger. He moved
closer, ready to take any opening that presented itself.

Sazar strained against
Gray, her arms wrapping tightly around his torso. She squeezed with
inhuman strength and even Gray, whose tolerance for pain bordered
on the uncanny, was forced to grunt. "Let me taste you," she
whispered. "It will only hurt for the first moment or two. And then
you will shiver in pleasure. You will beg me to
continue."

"I doubt that," Gray
retorted, gritting his teeth as his ribs began to grind together.
He brought his head back and then slammed his forehead into her
face. Blood spurted from her nose and she howled in pain, clutching
all the tighter. Gray was unaffected by the horrors of her face –
though he remembered virtually nothing of his past before arriving
in Sovereign, he was somehow sure that he’d seen worse than this in
the past.

"I’m going to tear your
heart out and rip it into chunks," the demon screamed.

Gray realized that she was
unused to pain, having grown accustomed to inflicting it and not
receiving. He took a chance by releasing his hold on her shoulders
and instead grabbing her by the head. He drove his thumbs into her
eyes and she howled like a banshee, tossing him away.

That gave Morgan his
opportunity. He raised his gun and fired, sending all of his
available shells into the demon’s body. She jerked repeatedly,
thrashing about as blood flowed from her wounds. She raked the air
with her claws and vanished, screaming inhuman obscenities at them
both.

Morgan blinked. "Is she
dead?"

"No. Something like her
can’t be killed, only driven from this plane. She’ll slink away to
heal her wounds." Gray examined Doris and frowned.
"Dead."

Morgan knew there were few
things in the world that his employer hated more than failing to
save an innocent life. It didn’t matter that he’d had no inkling
that this girl was in danger. Gray would still beat himself up over
her demise.

Gray looked about them, his
expression returning to its neutral state. "It looks like someone
was hoping to find those papers here. That’s a good sign. Means
they’re unaware that we have them."

"So now what?"

"We notify the authorities
and have them pick up this poor girl’s remains. Then we head back
to headquarters and plan our next move. With luck, Samantha and Eun
will be returning at the same time."

Morgan placed his gun back
into its holster and lowered his voice. "Chief, what was that
thing?"

"A blood demon. They exist
just outside our range of vision. There are only a dozen or so in
existence but they’re old, far older than Man." Gray’s expression
darkened. Morgan was certain he was mulling over the fact that he
would be able to recall such information while simultaneously being
unable to remember things about his own life.

"Life just gets stranger,
doesn’t it?" Morgan whispered. Gray’s lips twisted in an
almost-grin but it vanished so quickly that Morgan wasn’t sure if
he had imagined seeing it.

"That it does," was all
Lazarus said in reply.

Chapter III

Houses of Death

Eun crouched on a tree limb
overlooking Goodwill’s fenced property and he didn’t like what he
saw. He climbed down to where Samantha was waiting for him and she
could tell from the look on his face that something wasn’t
right.

"Is Goodwill at home?" she
asked.

"Didn’t see him. But there
are men walking around in the yard, guarding the estate. And I saw
several that were dressed as ninja."

"I don’t have the foggiest
idea what that means," Samantha admitted.

"No reason why you should.
Ninja were mercenaries back in feudal Japan. They specialized in
assassination, espionage and sabotage. I didn’t know anyone still
practiced their dark arts but with how strange Sovereign’s
becoming, nothing should surprise me."

Samantha put her hands on
her hips and thought things over. They were in an expensive
neighborhood but in Sovereign that just meant the trash wore more
expensive clothing. Even so, it was a heavily patrolled area by the
police and despite the fact that all members of Assistance
Unlimited held special privileges with law enforcement, she was in
no hurry to attract any attention. "These ninja are deadly, I take
it?"