Chapter 44

Kestrel winced when the broken floorboard groaned loudly beneath his weight. He thought back to his recent revelation that he and Aris shared the memory of the deceased rebel leader Dren, and how they had promised to talk once they’d found where Zebulon had hidden young Cillia.

There was a mixture of fear and anticipation boiling in his heart. What did Dren know? What memories of Aris’ could fill the holes of the invading memories he had gained from the rebel leader?

Aris looked over to him and his slight glare told Kestrel to proceed with more caution. Kestrel wondered what danger the doctor posed. He couldn’t possibly be as dangerous as Aris seemed to think he was.

From what Aris had told him of the man, it seemed that there was nothing to worry about, but Aris had warned him of the dangers of a man pushed into a corner, and Aris had forced Zebulon’s hand.

Even one such as he may be dangerous.

They searched the rooms of the abandoned inn. They grimaced at the filth they saw there. There was an overwhelming odor of piss, blood, and narcotics that stained the walls. The combination of aromas were headache inducing.

Why is everything abandoned? And why so recently? Aris’ skin prickled with gooseflesh. Something felt wrong.

There was an air of pain that hung in the abandoned building.

“Why’s everyone gone?” Kestrel voiced Aris’ mental question. “It’s eery.”

“Keep an eye out. Something terrible happened here recently,” Aris said, following his policing instincts.

Kestrel nodded and followed silently.

Each new room opened to another disappointment and Kestrel began to doubt the credibility of the information that Aris had wrangled, but Aris knew the opposite was true. The fact that the place wasn’t crawling with the usual infestation of addicts, thugs, and murderers was a testament that something had happened there.

They were on the right track.

There. There was a noise. It was fainter then a whisper carried miles on the air, but Aris heard something.

“Did you hear that?” Aris whispered.

Kestrel twisted his head in a ‘no.’

It had been the slightest sound, but Aris knew that he had heard something. He beckoned for Kestrel to creep silently behind him and he followed the sound that he soon recognized to be breathless whimpering.

They found the source of the noise in the partially collapsed kitchen.

Zebulon was flayed out on the ground, his fingers mutilated beyond recognition, and his body covered in bruises. He was so brutalized he was nearly unrecognizable.

Kestrel gagged at the sight. “How’s he alive?” he asked as he surveyed the scene.

Zebulon’s body was a horrifying patchwork of deep yellow and purple bruises and long festering gashes.

The rusty smell of dried blood permeated the room.

Aris ignored the question and kneeled down at the coroners side. He began to ask the pale brutalized man what had happened to him, but through the dim lighting, he was able to see that Zebulon’s tongue had been removed.

It was no small miracle that the doctor still clung to life. Aris was sure that whoever had attacked the coroner had intended to kill him; and surely he should be dead.

It was only his iron will that kept him breathing up until this point.

“I’m so sorry my friend,” Aris said, looking into Zebulon’s shell shocked eyes. There was no recognition in them.

Whatever was left of Zebulon had been taken from him in the beating. Even if his body were to miraculously survive the ordeal, his mind would never again be the same.

“Who did this?” Kestrel grimaced with rage. He’d seen savagery on the streets, but nothing this inhumane. Nothing as horrifying as what had been done to Zebulon.

“I don’t know. But we need to find out before he dies,” Aris responded. “Come.”

Kestrel obeyed and kneeled down beside Aris. After the initial shock of seeing the coroner’s mangled body wore off, he started to gag at the smell. The copper scent of blood mixed with the scent of Zebulon’s involuntary relief of his bowels and bladder that the beating had caused made him sick up.

He turned his head and retched, barely holding in the vomit that churned in his stomach.

“You’ll eventually get used to it despite the desire to never do so,” Aris whispered sympathetically.

Kestrel nodded and turned back to look at the coroner, his face distorted in disgust at the sight, but he obeyed and laid his hand on the coroner’s bare chest as Aris had indicated. Doing his best to avoid the largest of the gashes that criss-crossed the pale man’s body.

“Tell me what you see,” Aris commanded Kestrel while he too laid his bare hand on the wounded man’s chest.

Visions flooded the duo.

Aris watched as he saw the coroner’s previous conversation with him. It felt like it had been ages ago, but the conversation had taken place less than two weeks prior. So much had happened since then.

It was strange seeing himself through the eyes of others. Did he really look like that? It was always odd seeing himself in someone else’s memories.

No, no time to focus on that.

He moved on.

Aris saw the doctor getting spooked during their conversation and was with him as he ran away.

He felt the cool mountain air whipping his face as he ran. He was used to the cold though, so it hadn’t bothered him. What had bothered him though was the consistent feeling that he had been followed to the General’s house. Why had he decided to turn to Aris Ravenscroft? What fool thought had convinced him it would be the best course? Why did he think Aris would help him, a lowly coroner?

Aris watched intently as he floated through the dying man’s memories.

His vision cut to the morgue.

Zebulon had gone to work that next day, but after he finished relieving himself in the lavatories and was exiting them he had caught sight of the man.

He wore dark robes. The same robes that those monsters who’d dragged him into this mess had worn all those years ago.

They knew what he’d done. They knew about the girl. He had to run. He had to escape. He needed to go.

He needed to go now!

Zebulon fled.

*****

Kestrel gasped when the coroner’s memories washed over him.

It was a strange feeling having someone else’s recollections in your brain. It felt as if another person had taken up residence in his mind. Kestrel wondered if Aris or Wallace ever felt like they weren’t at home in their own minds after taking in the memories of someone else.

Upon touching Zebulon, Kestrel recalled his torture at the hands of one dressed the same as the Inquisitor that had killed Treall.

The Inquisitor had started with the coroners fingers first. He said he enjoyed the symbolism of flaying open the hands of a man who used them to cut open the bodies of others for a living.

What symbolism there was to be found in such a brutal act was beyond Kestrel.

Though it wasn’t his own memory, Kestrel’s heart rate spiked and his brow dripped sweat as he recalled the torture that Zebulon had faced. He could almost feel the pain of having his hands gashed open that the dying man had felt. He could almost taste the wet copper blood pouring from Zebulon’s mouth in his visions.

The beatings continued and Kestrel wanted to pull away. He wanted to do anything but watch the horror flowing through Zebulon’s memories but he clamped down and kept wading through the recollections of the dying man. He would relive these tortures a thousand times over if they could help him save Cillia.

Kestrel’s visions soon skipped back to before the attack and he watched the thin, pale, coroner flee from the Inquisitor and how he had wondered the streets, dodging from alley to shadowy alley, paranoid that the light would betray him to the inhuman monsters that were scouring the city for him.

Kestrel felt Zebulon’s chest pounding. He had hid the young girl well, no-one would be able to find her, he had made sure of it but he held no false belief about his strength. He’d given in to the the tortures of the Inquisitors years before, and he knew that if he were pressed, he would do so again.

So he ran.

Zebulon ran and hid.

He would keep the young child safe as long as he could. The red-headed girl had become his symbol of redemption. She was a representation of his atonement.

The last time he had checked on her, she had nearly recovered from her near fatal injuries.

She was walking —Kestrel’s stomach turned with an impossible mixture of anxiety and relief at those memories— and had recovered enough to eat solid foods, but the poor thing had a faraway look in her eyes. It was as if her soul too had leaked from her skull with that brutal hit she had taken.

He’d yet to hear the child utter a single word.

Kestrel turned away. He wasn’t ready to face that quite yet.

Kestrel’s vision jumped back to the tortures. Zebulon’s hands had been flayed open, but the Inquisitor hadn’t stopped there. He’d assaulted the coroner with visions of tortures as he was abusing the man’s body. Doubling horror upon horror.

Kestrel had to credit the pale doctor for his bravery. He had lasted longer than Kestrel imagined he could. He had weathered the storms of brutal memories that the Inquisitor had dug into his brain like worms eating the dead flesh of a corpse.

It wasn’t until his hands had been peeled open and the Inquisitor had started working his way upward, flaying each tendon that he’d broken beneath the pain.

Tears streamed from Kestrel’s eyes as he saw the dying man’s memories play out in front of his eyes as if he were watching through milky water.

He wanted to hate Zebulon for betraying the young girl’s location, but he couldn’t. He pitied the man.

“You are going to die. You’ll become a corpse, just like the ones you’ve made a life defiling. How does it feel joining them?” the Inquisitor had a poisonous chuckle. The monster actually enjoyed what he was doing.

Were all of them like him? Had the one that’d nearly killed him and Sephira just been a fluke?

Until that moment Kestrel realized that he held a subconscious belief that his Inquisitor was the norm. That he wasn’t a fluke. He had wished they would break when faced with the truth, but the creature he saw so clearly in Zebulon’s memory showed him that there were those who truly enjoyed murder.

This monster had pleasured in brutality.

He was beyond saving. He needed to be put down like a rabid dog.

Kestrel broke his grip on the dying man and vomited. He had seen too much. The Inquisitor’s actions demanded death.