Anne Rice - Servant of the Bones

They didn’t look so ordinary in here, these slithering swaggering bucolic men, no, rather like tramps from a waterfront, crawling out from under the rope with the rats to steal what men have dropped, but it was so crowded, even here, shoulder to shoulder, and cheek turned from cheek, as lashes rose and fell to make the eye private. And the noise was loud. No one took the proper notice—three clothed in filth tracking the beautiful woman.

And she the young queen with the dark shining hair and the painted coat came up the steps to the landing, her face innocent and bright as she reached for a long black scarf, a beaded scarf, a lovely twinkling thing, and caught it in her fingers, dangling from the hook, a scarf full of dark stitched flowers and shimmering embroidered designs, lovely, as if meant for her.

“Good afternoon, Miss Belkin.” So the queen had a name, and the merchants of this time were no less clever than in any other.

But I saw Billy Joel had struck! In that one second, he had pushed against her slender back, Hayden took her from the left, and Doby, as frenzied as Billy Joel, drove his pick from the right, so that the three wounds were made at once, and the life inside her lurched, and the language in her died, but not her heart. Her lungs filled with blood.

Geniuses of the kill, these cheap assassins. They walked right away from her, before she even fell, not even bothering to run, out of the door before she even tottered over the glass case. The scarf was still in her right hand. The woman bent over:

“Miss Belkin?”

I had to follow them. She was falling down dead, leaning over the glass, as if this was just a pain she had to feel and it would pass. She’d be dead in seconds! And I knew the killers, and the merchant lady didn’t even know she was dying.

I shot through the front doors. I knew I shoved against the humans to move them out of my way. I felt them. I wasn’t going to lose the Evals. I went up.

Over the heads of the crowd, I flew, formed but transparent, nothing anyone would notice, and quickly caught up with them.

The Evals had broken apart. But no one in this next block of shuffling hundreds seemed to notice them; what need was there to hurry? Billy Joel had a smile on his face, bright smile.

They had put three hundred people and ten seconds between them and the murder.

“I will kill you for this!” I heard my voice aloud. I felt the air inside me, swirling, as if I’d made myself solid enough to feed on the fumes that rose from the pavements, from the stalled engines, from the blasting horns, from the swarm of human flesh.

Come to me, garments like those of my enemy, as I am made flesh! I dropped down in front of Billy Joel. Reach for the pick. Get it. Kill him. I saw my fingers close on his wrist. He never clearly saw me, only felt the bone break. As he cried out, his brother turned. I drove the pick into Billy Joel, I took its wooden handle out of his belt and drove it in through his shirt, deep, the way he had driven it into her, only many more times.

Astonished, he spurted blood.

“You die, you filthy dog, you killed that girl, you die.”

Hayden came towards me, right onto the pick, no trouble at all, and I gave him three quick thrusts, including one in the neck. There were people walking by, not turning their heads. Others were looking at the fallen Billy Joel.

Now only Doby was left and Doby had fled, Doby had seen them go down and was running about as fast as a human can run through the obstacle course of the crowd. I reached out, grabbed his shoulder…

“Wait a minute, man!” he said to me. I sank the pick into his chest, the same three times, to make it good, and pushed him towards the wall. People stepped out of our way, turning the other way. He slid down to the pavement dead, and a woman cursed as she stepped over his left leg.

Now I understood the genius of their crime in this crowded city. But there was no time to think on it. I had to return to Esther.

My body was formed, I was running, and I had to make my way, like any other human now, solid, back to the glass doors of the palace.

The air was filled with screams. Men ran into the emporium of clothes. I pushed to get close. I could feel my tangled black hair. I could feel my beard. All eyes were on her.

Out she came, laid and covered on a white linen stretcher. I saw her head tumbled to my side, her big glossy eyes, with their pearly whites so pure, her mouth leaking blood like an old fountain. Just a trickle.

Men screamed for others to get back. An old one wailed at the top of his lungs, bowing as he saw her. This was her driver, her guard perhaps, the gray-haired man. His face was furrowed, his narrow back bent. He bowed and cried out, he cried out in a dialect of Hebrew. He loved her. I pushed carefully towards her.

A white car came speeding to the spot, printed with red crosses and topped by swirling lights. The sirens were unspeakable. Might as well have been the picks through my ears, but there was no time to worry about my pain. She was still living, breathing, I had to tell her.

Into that car, they carried her, lifted high, like an offering over the crowd…Through the back doors she went inside, her eyes looking for something, for someone.

Gathering all my strength, I moved others out of my path. My hands—true and familiar and mine—hit the long glass windowed side of the white car. I looked into the glass. I felt my nose against it. I saw her! Her big sleepy eyes full of dreamy death, I saw her.

And she said aloud, I heard it, a whisper rising like a whiff of smoke.

“The Servant…Azriel, the Servant of the Bones!”

The door was open. The men ministering to her bent low.

“What is it, honey? What did you say?”

“Don’t make her speak.”

She stared at me through the glass, and she said it again, I saw her lips move. I heard her voice. I heard her thought. “Azriel,” she whispered. “The Servant of the Bones!”

“They’re dead, my darling!” I cried out. No one around me, pressing as hard as I pressed to see her, cared what I said.

She and I, we looked at each other. Then her soul and spirit blazed for one instant, visible and together, the full shape of her body over her, hair like wings, face expressionless or turned away from the earth forever, who can know, and then she was gone, risen, in a blinding light. I ducked from the light, then tried to see it again. But it was gone.

The body lay an empty sack.

The doors slammed shut.

The siren split my ears again.

The car roared into the stream, forcing other engines out of its path, people shifted and sighed and groaned around me. I stood stock-still on the pavement. Her soul was gone.

I looked up. Knees pushed against my leg. A foot came down hard upon my own. I wore the same kind of dirty string shoe as my enemy. I was almost toppled from the shallow curb.

The car was beyond my sight, and the Evals dead not a hundred feet away, yet no one here in this melee knew, so crowded was it, and I thought—without context, without reason—of what was said about Babylon after Cyrus conquered it, that funny remark which the Greek historian Xenophon had made, or was it Herodotus, that so big was Babylon and so dense with people that it took two whole days before people in the middle of the city knew that it had been taken at all.

Well, not me!

A man said, “Did you know who that was?” This was English, New York talk, and I turned just as if I were alive and I were going to answer, only there were tears in my eyes. I wanted to say,

“They killed her.” Nothing came out of my mouth but I had a mouth and the man was nodding as if he saw the tears. My God, help me. This man wanted to comfort me. Someone else spoke: