Darren Shan - City of the Snakes

I finish with the push-ups and segue into sit-ups, focusing on my abdominal muscles. I’m in great shape for a man pushing fifty. I have to be. The streets devour the weak. I must be stronger than those I hunt and kill.

My eyes flick to the photograph hanging on the wall at the foot of my bed. This is a small apartment, a bedroom, living room, kitchenette and bathroom. The wallpaper was old when I was young. The smell from the alley is suffocating in hot weather. But it’s home. I deserve and long for no better.

In the photo, an off-duty police officer has an arm draped paternally around the shoulders of a young amateur actress. They’re beaming at the camera. I’ve loved both of them, in different ways, and hated them more than I’ve loved. The woman died by my hand before I became Paucar Wami. The man is missing, presumed dead, but I believe he’s still alive. My sole purpose in life is to find him, put a gun to his temple and blow his brains out. On that day the killing can stop, and so can I. Until then I act out the part of my father and roam these streets without rest, hunting, killing, searching.

I start on neck rolls. Whisper softly to myself as I rotate my head, a word or short sentence each time my chin touches my chest. “Paucar. Wami. I am. Paucar Wami. The night. Is mine. No rest until. He dies.”

He— Bill Casey, the cop who destroyed me, who robbed me of everything I ever had and was, reducing me to this pale shadow of my inhuman father in the process. I have Bill’s small left finger — the digit that hangs from my neck — and one day, if he’s out there, I’ll have the rest of him too.

I think about Bill and Paucar Wami every day, every hour. Even when trailing prey, they’re foremost in my thoughts. Everything I am, I owe to them. Everything I do is in response to the hell of their creation.

Wami was my father, a legendary serial killer, beloved of The Cardinal. A beast who tormented and murdered to pass the time. Somewhere along the line his path crossed with Bill Casey’s. I haven’t worked out what Wami did to Bill — I suppose he butchered someone close to him — but it drove Bill mad. He swore revenge and spent decades plotting a bizarre retribution. Befriending me as a child, he guided me through much of my life, keeping me close by his side, only to strip me of everything I valued when the time was right, slaughtering those close to me, pinning the blame on Wami in the crazy belief that I’d take up arms against my father and kill him.

I confronted Bill once I’d unmasked him. When I asked why he didn’t kill Wami himself, he cited poetic justice. That didn’t make sense then, and it hasn’t grown any clearer with the passage of time. Unless Bill’s alive, and I can find him and squeeze the truth out of him, I doubt it ever will.

My head comes to a stop. I take several deep breaths, then head for the kitchenette to prepare breakfast. A simple meal — dry cereal, toast, slices of cold meat. Food doesn’t interest me. I eat to keep my body — my engine — ticking over. It’s fuel. Without it, I’d stop. And stopping’s something I can’t allow myself to do, not until Casey’s severed head rests on a spear before me.

And if he really died in the blast he engineered — the blast that left my body scarred and burned — and didn’t plant a corpse in his place? Then I’ll carry on until I grow old and withered, and perish on the streets of blood that I have chosen to make my own. Either way, there can be no rest. Not for the wicked.

I was an alcoholic once. In the nightmare months after Bill’s awful revelation, I almost gave myself over to the bottle. That would have been the easy way out. I often wish I’d taken it. But I hung tough, and gradually, when only the abyss loomed large in my life, the plan presented itself.

My father wasn’t human. The original Cardinal, Ferdinand Dorak, said he’d created Paucar Wami out of thin air, assisted by blind Incan priests who’ve controlled this city for centuries. He said he’d created others too — Ayuamarcans. Whenever he destroyed one of his creations, a green fog crept over the city and gnawed away at people’s minds, eliminating all memories of the unreal person.

I don’t know if The Cardinal was telling the truth or if he was a hundred percent bugshit, but there was something supernatural about Wami and the others. I’m the only one who remembers the Ayuamarcans. When The Cardinal died, those who were left faded out of existence and memory, except for Wami, whose legend lived on vaguely.

The plan was to re-create the serial killer, and thus lure Bill out of hiding. Since Bill had devoted so much of his life to destroying the hated Paucar Wami, I figured he wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d pursue his crazed quest, even if he was no longer sure whom he was chasing. The trouble was, with Wami gone — banished to the realms of nothingness when The Cardinal died — there was no one for him to chase, no reason for him to come out of hiding.

So I gave him one.

Following the food with half a pint of milk, I edge into the tiny bathroom and relieve myself. While washing my hands, I study my reflection in the mirror. I’m dark skinned like my father, very similar in appearance. The main differences — Wami was bald, with green eyes, and sported tattoos of twisting, multicolored snakes, one down either cheek, their heads locking in the middle beneath his lower lip.

I started with the hair. Scissors and a razor rid me of that. Green contact lenses for the eyes. Then the tattoos (which, as a bonus, hid the worst of my scar tissue). It took awhile to find a tattooist capable of replicating my father’s serpentine design, and several lengthy, painful sessions to ink in every last coil, scale and link, but eventually it was done and I took on the full look of Paucar Wami, down to the leather jacket and motorcycle that were favorites of his.

All that remained was to kill.

I used to remove the contact lenses each night, before retiring, but now I leave them in, not caring about the damage that must be doing to my eyes. They help keep me in character. Such small touches have become second nature. They have to, if the disguise is to work, if I’m to truly become the killer I seek to mimic and tempt my tormentor out of hiding.

I realized it wasn’t enough to look like Paucar Wami. To be him, I had to act as he had. I had to murder. At first, when the madness was fresh upon me, I thought to kill indiscriminately. The world had treated me cruelly and I meant to react in kind. I imagined myself butchering bloodily, freely. I got as far as shadowing a randomly picked woman to her home, slipping in at night while she was asleep and pressing my knife to the soft flesh of her throat.

I went no further. After an eternity of indecision, I withdrew, having shed no blood, to marvel at how close to true evil I had sailed. If I’d killed her, I genuinely would have become my father, and in time I’m certain I would have abandoned thoughts of revenge and lost myself entirely to viciousness.

Instead I ran home, moaning and weeping, and prayed for death. I almost took my life in the dark hours that followed, but the blade that had wavered at the woman’s throat crept away of its own accord every time I raised it to mine.

Over the next few days, between fits of rage and remorse, I found myself readjusting my plan . I couldn’t bring myself to kill the innocent, but I knew from experience that I was capable of dispatching the guilty. I’d killed during my years working for The Cardinal, as one of his Troops, and when I’d been betrayed by a woman in league with Bill and the villacs . This city’s full of criminals, deserving of death. If I left the innocent alone and set my sights on the scum…