Darren Shan - City of the Snakes

Monday, 22:00. I snatched several hours of sleep earlier and feel much fresher. I disguised myself as Al Jeery when I woke and went to do some shopping. I wear the makeup whenever I want to pass among ordinary people. Remove the contacts, don a wig, plaster the sides of my face with flesh-colored paint to hide the snakes, dump the leather jacket. I’m unrecognizable this way.

After a quick dinner I dispensed with the wig and makeup, slipped the contacts back in and took to the streets again, exiting my apartment by the fire escape and dark rear alley, as I always do when in Paucar Wami mode, careful not to reveal myself to any of my neighbors. I checked on a few of the worst trouble spots — things have calmed down, though I doubt the peace will hold — saw I wasn’t needed and returned to the business of meting out terror.

I’m on the prowl for a homosexual, homicidal rapist. He’s struck four times in three months. Brutally rapes his young male victims, then stabs them through the heart with an ice pick. A savage piece of work. More than worthy of the slow death he’s going to endure when I get hold of him.

Even as I think that, the small trace of a human within me whispers that there can be no justification for murder. Even though the people I kill are the lowest of the low, they have the right to be tried by law. I’m laboring under no delusions — what I do is wrong, unjust, immoral. If there’s an afterlife and a judgmental god, I’m in for the big drop. There can be no room for vigilantes in a civilized society, even one as beset by brutes as this. I’m no better than the scum I kill. If anything I’m worse, because I know what I do is wrong.

I turn down Cyclone Avenue, hugging the shadows, watching, waiting, at one with the night. Most of the buildings in the east date back to the 1950s. Old, tired, ugly, many in a state of slow collapse. The whole sector needs to be bulldozed and put out of its misery. That said, in the dark, with the crumbling brickwork, barred or splintered windows, and garbage-spattered streets obscured by the shady streaks of the night, it can almost pass for pleasant. Darkness becomes this city.

The rapist has struck in a different spot each time, no discernible pattern, but always in the east, between ten and midnight. I’ve been hunting for him since his second victim was discovered, slotting the search in around my other duties, scouring likely alleys, those that are ill lit and rarely used. Luck will need to be on my side if I’m to find him, but in my experience luck comes to those who work for it. I don’t always get my man — the Mounties can lay sole claim to that distinction — but few evade me once I focus on them.

The streets are as good as deserted. Mondays are traditionally quiet, and after the weekend we’ve endured, tonight’s even quieter than usual. I’m beginning to think I should head for home when I enter a cul-de-sac and spot two figures ahead, one on the ground, struggling and moaning softly, the other on top, thrusting with his hips and panting.

I slide against a damp, moss-encrusted wall and creep toward them. While I don’t jump to conclusions — although this looks like rape, I’ve come across couples engaged in equally violent but consensual intercourse before—1 do draw my knife and prepare for the worst.

Closer. The figure on the ground is male, black, fourteen or fifteen. Gagged and bleeding from a cut to his head. Trousers yanked down around his ankles. The man on his back swats him, hissing, stabbing at him with his penis. I don’t think he’s penetrated, and I also no longer think this is consensual. I’ve seen masochists put themselves through worse than this, but I’ve never seen naked terror in their eyes, the way I see it in the boy’s.

“That’s enough,” I say softly, stepping away from the wall, keeping my knife low by my side where the rapist can’t see it.

The man stops, startled, then pushes himself away from the boy and spins to confront me. He’s wearing a dark wool cap, pulled over his ears and forehead. A long, bulky jacket, open down the front. His trousers are crotchless. His exposed penis points at me like a dagger, uncommonly stiff.

“Bastard!” the rapist snarls. He reaches behind the boy and grabs a short but finely pointed ice pick — my man!

“I’ve been looking for you.” I grin bleakly, sheathing my knife and drawing the.45 I keep for encounters such as these. Only a fool goes up against an ice pick with a knife.

“Bastard!” the rapist snaps again — a man of limited vocabulary — and starts toward me, pick held high.

I raise my gun to shoot but stop as I catch a clearer glimpse of his penis. I realize why it looked so strange. It isn’t real — it’s a strap-on dildo. As the folds of the rapist’s coat shift, it clicks — I’m dealing with a woman!

Momentarily startled, I forget to fire, and she’s upon me. She swings for my left arm with the pick. Luckily for me, she misjudges and it scrapes off my leather jacket harmlessly, to whistle across the expanse of my chest. She curses and reverses her movement, fluid, swift. But not swift enough. I step out of the way of the pick. She stumbles from the force of the missed blow. I take three more steps back, raise my gun again and fire before she recovers. Not a finely judged shot, but at this range it’s almost impossible to miss.

An unexpected zinging sound is followed immediately by a deeper, thudding noise — a bullet burying itself in flesh. The rapist collapses with a muffled shriek, dropping her pick, falling backward, hands flying to her stomach, coming away sticky with blood.

I close on her, ready to shoot again if I have to. The kid is on his feet, pulling up his pants. He hasn’t taken the gag out. “Go,” I grunt. “Don’t look back.” He nods gratefully and flees.

The woman — no, the rapist is mewing softly. I must think of her purely as the murdering defiler that she is. I was raised to be polite to women. Got to forget that. Focus on the task. Finish her off or wait for her to die.

As I study her, I see that the dildo no longer juts out straight from her groin. It’s bent to one side. The bullet must have struck the fake penis, then ricocheted upward — the source of the zing. I can’t prevent a wicked grin. She who lives by the dildo, dies by the dildo.

Noises behind me. My smile vanishes. I pivot, gun raised. When I see three half-naked old women entering the cul-de-sac, staring hungrily at the woman on the ground, I relax and step aside.

The women dart past me and fix on the stricken rapist. She ignores them when they fasten their clawlike fingers on her — she has other things to worry about — and only screams when they bite into her flesh. Her shrieks are short-lived. One of the Harpies is on her mouth in seconds, covering her lips with her own, kissing her silent, smothering her cries. In no time at all the rapist succumbs to the inevitable and yields beneath the onslaught. Her limbs go still. Her eyelids stop fluttering and the emptiness of death takes the place of living thought.

The Harpy draws back, bits of the rapist’s lips and tongue dangling from her teeth. She gurgles triumphantly, then joins the other two in their feast, tearing warm flesh from the corpse with her hands and teeth, swallowing it raw.

I avert my gaze and nod politely at the primly dressed, middle-aged woman who has followed the Harpies into the cul-de-sac. “Mrs. Abbots,” I greet her.

“Mr. Wami,” she responds with a wan smile. She observes the Harpies at feed, then turns to me with a worried frown. “She was alive when they started?”

“Yes.”

“Was she a bad person?” Her face contorts in anticipation of the answer. She does her best to keep the Harpies away from the innocent, but sometimes they feed on the corpses of the good as well as the bad.