Bloodwalker

Chapter One Rurik Budapest, Hungary “School is out, no books today. Boneyard’s where the children play. Marta’s there and Peter, too, Silent faces, cold and blue. Shut the doors. Lock them tight. Ratman prowls the streets tonight.” The refrain of the children’s song swelled, and the winds swirled it up to the roof of an old stone church. Perched on its parapet, a line of gargoyle statues stared dead-eyed at the horizon. But one set of eyes stabbed downward. Rurik leaned over the edge, his gaze roving the street two stories below, searching for the source of the Hungarian rhyme. The retreating sun stained Budapest red. Shadows of tree limbs and buildings bled across lawns and sidewalks. Yellow pansies bowed their heads and furled their faces closed for the night. Sparrows, pigeons, and swifts abandoned the sky. Rurik scoured the area till he spotted the rhyme’s young singers. Three kids, probably no older than eight or nine, neared the gate of a train yard at the end of the road—the killer’s hunting ground. Forbidden things drew children. The grittier and scarier the place, the bigger the thrill. So there they went, two girls and a boy, shoving each other, squealing and laughing in fearful delight. They didn’t know four children had vanished, one by one, over the past month. Never any sign of a struggle. Just schoolbooks found along the road. Rurik’s rooftop position afforded him a good view of Budapest’s Istvantelek train depot. But as the children squeezed under the loose chain between gate and fence and wove down the path, the shadows grew. Subway cars sitting beneath electric wires seemed to lengthen on their tracks. Inch by inch, murk swallowed the tall grass and bushes that marked the boundary between the newer train warehouses and the rotting old one the children headed for. Plenty of places for a killer to hide. Dusk drained color from the rail yard and turned the children’s cheerful sweaters to corpse gray. They huddled together, as close as the weeds that sprouted from the crumbling asphalt under their feet. Rurik hoped they’d get nervous and run home. Doubtful anything would happen today anyway, not with the police searching the neighborhood for little Dora Tolnay who’d disappeared yesterday. But did he want to bet the kids’ lives on it? Especially after they finally overcame their fear and tiptoed through the entrance of the decrepit warehouse? He pulled his hood lower, shading his eyes from the dying sun’s glare as he strained to catch the slightest movement around the depot. Nothing stirred in the huge train yard. On nearby streets, people left their offices and entered parked cars or waited at the bus stop. If any glanced up at the peculiar form crouched on the church’s parapet, they’d betray no curiosity. That would be impolite—a violation of the keep-to-yourself code that held the country of radically diverse ancestries and cultures together. He’d be written off as a trick of the light or maybe an extra gargoyle. The stone monsters sat atop half the old façades in Budapest anyway. Being mistaken for a monster was nothing new. Rurik was used to it. The police presence and general alarm would be greater if they knew it was actually four children missing, not just one. A little girl taken from a park in northern Italy. A boy taken from a playground in Slovenia. A girl taken from an abandoned Slovenian train station a week later. And now a girl from Budapest. No one had put it together except Rurik. No one realized that each child had vanished on the day of the final performance of the Zorka Cyrka. And the killer’s appetite was increasing. Tomorrow was the circus’s last show in Budapest, and already a little girl was gone. Dora Tolnay had vanished on her way to a friend’s house. Her parents told the newspaper she often cut through the train yard to get there. This time, however, she never came out. Tension crept into Rurik’s shoulders, and he rolled the stiffness out. He didn’t have much time before he needed to leave. The killer had to make his move soon. Then Rurik heard it. The tiniest jingle, cutting through the sunset’s stillness, like a cat’s bell of warning. A shape emerged from the trees on the far side of the warehouse. White silk shrouded the figure, giving it a ghostly glow in the dimness. But it wasn’t a ghost. Far from it. It was a clown. The oversized tunic and baggy pants bore a checkered harlequin motif although clowns rarely wore that style anymore. And Rurik hadn’t seen the stiff fabric of the Elizabethan neck-ruff anywhere but old pictures. Yet there it was, like it had stepped from a silent film, accompanied not by an organ, but by bells tinkling from the tips of its three-pronged jester’s hat. The figure loped in a strange see-saw motion, somewhere between a limp and a gorilla’s hunched gait, its legs carrying it along almost as if they weren’t jointed like a normal human’s. Surprise glued Rurik’s feet to the stone parapet until a second later when the figure disappeared into the warehouse. Then he jumped, plummeting two stories to land in a crouch on the church’s lawn. Pain shuddered up his oversized leg bones. He took off, sprinting across the street, vaulting the shoulder-high gate, and plunging over the railroad tracks. Wind whistled in his ears. No, not wind. Noises like tiny train whistles. He sped up, following the sounds of children’s screams. Inside the warehouse’s doorway, he stopped short. The last rays of light filtered through holes in the roof, illuminating trains from long ago, their twenty-foot tall engines rusted into monuments to the past. Behind them sat boxcars with wooden sides so rotted half the planks had disintegrated. Each car was a giant skeletal ribcage revealing more desiccated trains beyond. Fungus covered the timbers. Vines dangled off metal roofs. Sickly little trees grew from the dirt floor like skinny travelers frozen in time, waiting to board the trains to nowhere. Istvantelek was a graveyard. The shrieks had stopped. Footsteps pounded toward him, and the two girls burst into view, dashing toward the exit. The boy wasn’t with them. One of the girls tumbled to her knees, her face upturned, glassy eyes meeting his within the darkness of his hood. Her mouth worked. A bubble of spittle popped between her lips, but no words followed. She pointed a shaky finger behind her. Rurik bolted down the center aisle of the petrified machines, gazing left and right between cars. Halfway down the expanse, a flock of barn swallows erupted from the far end. Their white breasts streaked through the gloom, and their tumultuous wing-beats matched the thudding of his heart. If he couldn’t find the clown—and the little boy—the child would become just another mystery in the wake of the circus as it traveled across Eastern Europe. The girls’ story about a clown wouldn’t be believed. Everyone knew the Hungarian police were useless. The parents would be left to mourn alone. A perfect family, shattered forever. Rurik doubled his speed. A squeal of hinges pierced the silence. He skidded around a caboose, grabbing the railing of its back platform to stay upright. The metal strut broke off in his hand. At the end of the warehouse, a door swung in the breeze. He dove through it. The pale figure of the clown hastened along the tracks, his off-kilter lope rocking the boy tucked in his arms, a warped caricature of a mother rocking her child. “Stop,” Rurik bellowed in his native Russian, knowing it was no Hungarian he chased. The kidnapper didn’t react. Didn’t even look back. He reached a walkway that crossed above the tracks and lurched up the steps. On the far side, trees and bushes lay in deep, dark thickets. A million places he could hide and lose a pursuer. Rurik raced after him, taking the stairs two at a time, gaining quickly. His boots clanged against the corroded metal catwalk. The whole structure vibrated beneath him. The clown glanced over his shoulder, the red grease-paint of his smile smeared sideways on his cheek. Rurik caught him halfway across the bridge, grabbing his arm. The short, stocky clown spun quicker than Rurik expected. His fist swung at Rurik’s head. No stranger to fights or taking punches, Rurik ducked his chin so the blow would glance off the hard skull above his ear. But the strike slammed into him like a weighted club. It pitched him sideways, toppling him over the railing. His feet flew into the air. He fell past the railings, scrabbling for a hold. Hooking an arm around the lowest one, he caught himself and hung, legs suspended only a yard above the electric train wires—and a thousand volts of death. By using one hand to hit Rurik, the kidnapper lost his grip on the child. The boy squirmed down the silken costume to land on the bridge. The clown bent and snatched at him. Rurik speared his free arm through the railings and wrapped a fist around the front of the harlequin tunic. He yanked, dragging the clown to his knees. The boy crawled away. The clown twisted and jerked against Rurik’s grip, and a snarl of frustration peeled his lips back from his teeth. Long teeth. Too long to be normal. He chopped at Rurik’s hand, the punishing blows heavy as a mallet on Rurik’s wrist. Rurik held on, jaw clenched against the pain raging through his forearm. He could take it. Had to give the child time to escape. The clown switched to hammering at the arm Rurik had locked around the lower railing. Rurik’s elbow went numb, and his grasp began to loosen. Several yards away, the boy scrambled to his feet and took off down the walkway. A howl of anger erupted from the clown. He leaned between the railings, beating his fists against Rurik’s head and shoulders. A black haze lowered across Rurik’s vision, like the curtain coming down on a performance. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the child staggering down the last of the stairs and fleeing toward the exit gates. Farther away with every step. Too far for the clown to catch him now. A final blow knocked Rurik loose. He fell toward the wires. Would the thousand volts feel like the lightning? Would they tear through his body, stiffen his muscles, and make every cell peal in agony? Would he get caught on the wires as the electrical fire ate his body from the inside out? Like the lightning, would the charge leave him alive but destroyed, stealing everything that was important to him? He hit the ground with a wrenching thud. As his consciousness dissolved, he wondered if he had finally died. At last. Moments later—hours later?—voices woke him. Five or six of them, drawing near, their tones confused and alarmed. He translated the Hungarian in his head. “Did you say he was hit by a train?” “I saw him fall off the bridge. I think someone pushed him.” “It’s dark as hell out here.” “Look. Over there. I think I see something.” Rurik willed his strength to return. He had to escape. “Why don’t we just call the night watchmen?” “Those fat guards don’t leave their huts for anything. Best have a look ourselves.” “But it could be dangerous! I heard a little girl say a crazy man was on the tracks and he scared her and her friends.” “She said he kidnapped her brother!” Rurik moved his neck. It cracked, but it worked. “No, no. I just saw the boy. He was right there with her.” “Someone should call the police.” “There. I see him. Let’s find out if he needs an ambulance first.” “You have a light?” Rurik really had to get out of there before— “My phone lights up. Here.” Rurik opened his eyes to a blue glow in his face. And then the screams started. He sat up, and the people recoiled in terror. A quick yank got his hood over his head but didn’t lessen the shrieks. He gathered his feet under him and bolted across the tracks and through the waist-high weeds. The screams chased him, blending with all the others from his past, the ones that had forced him to stop performing after the last time he was struck, ten years ago. The lightning’s kiss had turned the smiles of his seventeenth year into a permanent snarl, half his face and body twisted into a monstrous parody of a human. The car. Where had he left it? Damn. His brain felt like a rock bouncing inside his skull. Behind the church. That’s where he’d parked. He had to get to the Danube and across the bridge to Obudai Island. The circus’s box office would open soon. By now, his father would be worried. Maybe even trying to get into a security uniform. That would be a disaster, and word would get back to Alyosha. Rurik pounded down the street and finally spotted his car. He started to fish for keys and realized he had something in his hand. Under a streetlight, he slowed and uncurled his fingers. Lying in his palm was a red pom-pom. A button. Like the three he’d glimpsed on the front of the clown’s tunic. It had torn off in the struggle. After unlocking the car, he slid in, gunned the motor, and headed for the Arpad Bridge. Somewhere in the Zorka Cyrka—his home since childhood—among the circus’s tents, RVs, dressing rooms, and show trunks was a clown costume, missing a button. And he was going to find it. Find out who owned it. And he’d never let them hurt another child.