Chapter 5: Monsters Like Me
Into a psychic war I
Tear my soul
Apart and I
Eat it some more
--Rob Zombie, 'More Human Than Human'
Schuldig woke up cotton-headed and dry-mouthed. His headache was gone, but he still felt fuzzy, like someone had wrapped his brain in cotton. Even his sight was fuzzy. He rubbed his eyes to try and clear them, then yawned widely, feeling his jaw pop as he did so. He looked around, his brain finally clearing enough to see that he wasn't in his suite. He was in Crawford's. Had he fallen asleep here? If so, where had Crawford slept?
A searching hand told him the answer. The space next to him still held traces of body heat. He became aware that Crawford was in the shower. He looked down. Crawford must have undressed him, too. He didn't remember stripping down. And even if he had, he wouldn't have left on his underwear. The clothes he had been wearing last night were neatly hung on a hanger hooked on the back of a chair.
The laptop across the room chimed, letting Schuldig know that Esset had just sent another file. He got up and opened it, shoving the loose hair that escaped his braid out of his eyes. He read the file, then closed it. Finding a paper and pen, he jotted a quick note to Crawford, threw on his pants, and sauntered out the door, carrying the rest of his clothes.
Coming out of Crawford's room, he surprised a maid doing her rounds. "Morning," he purred as he stretched languidly. The older woman stared at him in shock. Schuldig put a finger over his lips. "Shhh. I left him asleep in there. Don't go waking him up, okay? Later." He waved at her and went down the hall to his room, smirking at the outrage and reluctant lust that his half-clad body had engendered in her. He turned, blew her a kiss and winked, then swiped his keycard and was in his room before she could even gasp.
----
Schuldig looked disdainfully at the ratty old motel. The fire damage was barely evident, a blackened section that nearly blended in with the rest of the dirt and grime. "This the place, huh?" he asked the girl that worked there.
She nodded vigorously. She was young, fairly attractive, with that prettiness that would fade before she was thirty. Her youth was her best feature, and she hid it under a heavy layer of makeup. "Yes sir. It was a young man, younger than me."
"How long did he stay here?" Schuldig gave her a faintly flirtatious smile. He knew that she found him very attractive, fascinating even. But then she had never seen anyone like him, outside of movies. Urbane, expensively dressed, obviously well-traveled. He was as foreign as a gryphon to her, a mythical creature in her small world. He would play on that to get her to loosen her tongue.
She normally would have been reticent with such an obvious outsider, but Schuldig dazzled her into garrulousness. "He came here at the beginning of the month, paid a full month's rent." The wonder in her voice let Schuldig know that such a thing was unusual around here. His eyes slid over the dingy rows of rooms. He wasn't surprised. These places looked like they were normally rented out by the hour, not by the night.
"He was quiet, kept to himself," she babbled on. "He was a shrimp. A mouse. Didn't say two words to me the whole time he was here," she said with a sniff. "Then last night, I don't know what happened. The place was going up in flames. When the firemen got here, they had a devil of a time trying to put the flames out. They didn't find the kid. No one's seen him since the fire."
She grew slyly furtive, and in a hushed voice, she leaned closer to say, "They found old man Holt's burnt body in the ashes. He breaks into people's rooms sometimes to get money for booze." A look of superior righteousness crossed her face. "Looks like he broke into his last rental."
Yeah, Schuldig thought. He broke into the wrong hotel room and surprised a harried, paranoid pyro. The kid probably had fried that old bum to a crisp before he even knew who it was. He smiled at the girl. "Well, thank you for your information. I won't keep you from your work any longer." With a mental nudge, he sent her back to her office. Like a bee gathering nectar, he moved from mind to mind, skimming the surface thoughts of the bums, whores and other occupants of the premises.
There was a lot of vicarious titillation. It was the same for all human animals, that dark excitement at strange tragedies, that tendency to go over them again and again until the next one came up. Vultures. One of the bums sitting on a rickety bench seemed promising. He sauntered over and sat down next to him. Fishing a gold cigarette case out of his jacket's inner pocket, he clicked it open. "Smoke?" he offered, holding out the high-quality imported cigarettes.
The old man blinked rheumy eyes at him, then those eyes lit with obvious greed. Schuldig politely ignored the loss of half the expensive cigarettes. He was particular about his smokes, but didn't smoke often. His silent generosity also made the man more kindly inclined to him, which was worth the small theft. He took one himself and put it between his lips. He fished out his lighter and lit the bum's cigarette, then his own. He made sure that the other man saw the diamond-encrusted lighter, the gold and sapphire cufflinks.
Flash the cash, he thought to himself. That's it, get greedy. There's money to be made here. Let all your friends know. He knew that in an hour he would have the information he needed. Word on the street was quick, and it was carried by hungry, grasping people. All Schuldig needed was the right person to get hungry and come sniffing around the smorgasbord.
He wasn't worried about being mugged. People on the street were greedy, but they also had an instinct for sensing predators more deadly than they were. Predators like Schuldig. He let his coat gape open just enough for a glimpse of his gun to show. It would be noted, as would his ease in carrying it and his alert yet unconcerned poise. With a nod at the man on the bench, he rose and went to get a cup of coffee at the greasy café while he waited for news on his prey.
He had barely exited the café when he was rewarded. A thin woman with a hard, distrustful face was waiting for him. She didn't waste time, something that he was glad for. "I hear you are looking for that kid whose hotel room caught fire." Her gaze quickly assessed his Italian shoes and tailored suit. "Poco was right. You are high-rollin'." She put her fingers together and rubbed them in the money gesture. "Hun'red, up front. Hun'red after you find him."
"Twenty-twenty," he said easily. She was expecting the bartering. Why disappoint?
"Hun'red, then seven'y-five."
"Fifty-fifty."
"Done." She held out her hand. He peeled off a fifty and gave it to her. She took the bill and crammed it in her flat bosom, then set off. Schuldig followed her to the subway, and the two rode in silence. At the fifth stop, she got off the train, and Schuldig followed her to an abandoned schoolyard. She pointed to the derelict buildings. "Friend of mine, Josie, she sez that she saw the kid go in there." She started off to the buildings, but he stopped her with a hand.
"That's good. I'll take it from here." He handed her the other fifty. She stared at it, then set her jaw.
"I may be a streetworker, but I keep my deals."
Schuldig sighed and fished out another fifty. "You kept it. I know he's here. Now get lost." When she reached out to take the bills, his free hand flashed out and he grabbed her face to hold her still. With a quick mental sweep, he coaxed away the memory of seeing him and sent her off, $150 richer. When she was gone, he set about quietly ousting the rest of the potential witnesses.
The last transient scurried into the afternoon by the time he was done. He'd had to go about the whole thing carefully, to keep from scaring off his prey. The boy was edgy and paranoid. A mass exodus would have alarmed him and made Schuldig's job that much harder. While he was easing the others out, he called Crawford on his cell.
Crawford had been getting ready for his lunch appointment with his mother and had been distracted. Schuldig asked Crawford to offer Claire his regrets and had apprised him of the situation. Crawford hadn't much to say about the whole operation, a good sign that he hadn't had any bad visions about this. Not that Schuldig expected any problems. He could handle a untrained kid, no matter how powerful his talent.
He watched the last potential witness disappear into the alleys, then began the hunt.
----
Xavier LeJeune sat in the shadows, tears running down his face. His skinny body, smudged with soot, shuddered with his stifled sobs. He hadn't meant to kill that old man. He was so scared, though. Ever since they had made the group decision not to work for Esset, he'd been on the run. What had seemed an exciting game a few weeks ago had degenerated into this non-stop nightmare, one he couldn't wake up from.
He wished that he could see Rich or Vela. Even Tina, brat that she was. He wished he was in the dorm that he shared with Rich on the university campus, listening to Rich play his cello next door. He wished he could bury his head in Vela's grandmotherly lap while she soothed him and reassured him that he was normal. He really wished for the last.
He didn't feel normal. He felt like a murdering monster. Forever emblazoned in his brain would be the memory of that old man's face blackening and crisping in the super-hot flame that Xavier had produced out of surprise and fear. The flame had been so hot and so fast that the man hadn't even had time to scream. It was all over before Xavier could even wake up fully. He had fled the scene, running blindly until he reached this abandoned school.
He looked at his soot-blackened fingers. "I'm a monster," he whispered to himself.
"We all are," an accented voice replied. Xavier looked up with a start, then his world went black. He didn't even hear the gunshot that echoed in the empty room. Schuldig picked up the spent shell casing and put it in his pocket. "Especially among us, there's always a worse monster than you." Without much hope, he sifted through the boy's meager belongings.
As he expected, there was no clue as to the others' whereabouts. "Dead end number two," he muttered disgustedly. He looked down at the body. In another life, before the birth of Schuldig, he might have felt sympathy for the boy. Sympathy and an intimate sense of understanding. He had been a Xavier LeJeune once, too.
The empty shell of Xavier LeJeune stared blankly at him, a bloody hole in the middle of his forehead like a mark of enlightenment. "Death, the ultimate enlightener," Schuldig said to the corpse. In death and in life, the boy had not enlightened Schuldig. Schuldig had picked gently, stealthily, through the boy's mind while he sat there, bowed in grief. When he saw the boy had nothing for him, he put the kid out of his misery. "Rest in peace, kid."
The door swung shut with a protesting creak behind Schuldig. The only thing to hear the sound of Schuldig's leaving was a family of rats that even now were eyeing the new bounty that used to be a fifteen-year-old named Xavier LeJeune.
----
A/N: Thanks to:
TrenchcoatMan – Thank you. I think the cathedral pieces are my favorites.
Precognition74 – Ah, yes. Poor Nagi played wallflower an awful lot, didn't he? He got a bigger role in Glühen, but not by much:/
Lyra Stormrider – Loved hearing from you, as always, and muchas gracias for the help. I owe you big time.
Yanagi-sen – Don't they, though? Most times, I feel less like a writer, and more like a lackey to my characters' whims. The idea of Farf in Crawford's cathedral is pretty cool to me, too. Seems right, in a twisted sort of way.
Lestat197 – Yay! New reviewer! Hope this is soon enough for you, but I must warn you, I'm not usually this consistent.
LoneCayt – Err, I hate to disappoint, but in this arc, Crawford's an only child. Maybe in another fic in a different arc, I'll write him a past where some siblings pop up. Afraid I can't do it here, though. Sorry!
The Masked Instigator – Another new reviewer. Always more than happy to welcome you aboard. And I'm always fond of saying, better late than never! I'm just happy that you've read the whole arc and enjoyed them. Thank you for your kind words. I hope you will enjoy the rest of this fic as much.