Black Blood - Hardcover

John Meaney is the author of five previous novels, including Bone Song, and has been short-listed three times for the British Science Fiction Award. He has a degree in physics and computer science and holds a black belt in Shotokan karate. He lives with his wife in Kent, England, where he is at work on his next novel.

Chapter One


Donal sat in the back of a police cruiser as it drove through the shadowed, broken streets of Lower Danklyn, past purplestone tenements that lay cracked and deserted. White lizards watched from the rubble. High overhead, a Tristopolis PD scanbat glided, observing.

I've seen men die before.

Not just men. His beautiful, lovely Laura, her head blown apart in a gray spray of brains and bone and black blood—

This one had better suffer.

But he could summon up no real joy. On some level of abstraction, Donal knew that Alderman Kinley Finross would take three hours to die. The bastard deserved every agonized second he was about to endure. Donal felt a sense of rightness—but only that.

There should be more.

Perhaps a living man would now feel his heart beat faster, his skin grow damp with perspiration, his stomach grow queasy.

More feeling.

In a living man, emotions would arise from masses of neurons in the body organs, and a flow of peptides almost as complex as the nerves themselves. But Donal was cold—would feel icy to another person, to a normal human touch—and his heart, Laura's heart, beat at the same unvarying pace inside his chest.

Laura. Oh, my Laura.

It hadn't been Finross who pulled the trigger. Senator Blanz had ripped Donal's Magnus from his grip, and used it to destroy Laura before swiveling to shoot Donal in the heart. After dying, Donal had awoken with his chest cavity split open, with paramedic mages finishing the installation of a black heart. Laura Steele's zombie heart—already beating inside him.

"Not long now." Al Brodowski, his massive shoulders convex with muscle, turned the steering wheel. "Has weasel-face gotten his self supporters?"

There was a bend in the road. A group of people stood beneath billowing, floating banners: Rending Renders Society Cruel. They opposed the death penalty as a matter of principle. Donal wondered if they spared a thought for the near-invisible wraiths they were using to hold the banners overhead. Perhaps those boundwraiths had their own opinions on dealing with murderers.

"Can we run over 'em?" Bud Brodowski, hulking like his brother, was in the front passenger seat. "Just a couple, please, Lieutenant?"

"Don't tempt me," said Donal from the rear.

But he spoke on an inhalation, which gave his voice a strange resonance, as if he were Zurinese. He saw the shared glance between the Brodowskis.

Damn it. There's too much to remember.

So much changed when you had to consciously control the lungs, when breathing was no longer necessary. When, arguably, you were no longer a person but a thing, an abomination created by thaumaturgical intervention instead of allowing extinction to...

To provide bones for the reactor piles? Would that have been better?

Farther back, Unity Party supporters glowered at the police car. Officially, their party did not condone this demonstration, not when their man Finross had been complicit in the death of Maria daLivnova, a very human diva.

To either side in darkness, amber eyes glowed, then disappeared as the deathwolves turned their attention elsewhere, before shining again as they refocused, following the progress of Donal's car. They belonged to the prison pack, normally patrolling inside the grounds.

"You think they're expecting trouble?" said Bud.

"Nah." Al shook his head, but still pulled his shotgun from its dashboard clip. "Going to be a quiet day."

"Not for Finross," said Donal.

The prison gates looked like darkened pewter, two feet thick, on which the crossed axes of the Federal Prison Authority were embossed, overlaying a yin-yang whose dots were a serpent's eyes. The gates swung inward, and the cruiser passed through.

Gravel sprayed as Al turned the wheel, following the arc of the driveway.

"Sorry," he said. "Shit."

"I hate this place," muttered Bud.

The gravel was formed of knucklebones, taken from prisoners across the centuries. Mostly, it came from corpses, but some came from the excision of living fingers: a punishment for infringing prison discipline.

Near the main steps, where white runes glowed upon the flagstones, Mayor Dancy's official limousine was parked. The city's Tree Frog insignia glistened on the black doors.

"Probably his assistant," said Donal. "His Honor doesn't like these things, according to the Gazette."

"Don't blame him." Al drove past perhaps twenty parked cars. "Here we go."

"Got newspaper guys here." Bud replaced the shotgun in its clip. "Maybe they'll interview you, Lieutenant. You being a hero and all."

"Huh." Donal held out his hand, palm up, fingers extended. "You want to see my new heroic trick?"
Al halted the car, pulled up the hand brake, and switched the engine off. He and Bud turned in their seats.

"Like this," added Donal.

Using neuromuscular control that he'd never possessed while living (although he'd known a living dancer with the ability) Donal curled just his little finger tightly, while the others remained outstretched. Then, slowly, he curled the ring finger, then the forefinger, and finally the thumb. The middle finger remained outstretched.

Then he raised the middle finger horizontal to the vertical.

"Pretty neat, Lieutenant."

"Ya gotta teach us that one."

Donal slid out of the car, smiling. Then his shoes scrunched on knucklebones, and he looked up at the dark massive pile that was Wailing Towers, the city's largest prison. His smile was gone. If zombies could shiver, he would have.

It won't bring Laura back.

Still, Finross's death would count for something.
Someone had redecorated. The viewing chamber held rows of plush, dark-red upholstered benches, instead of the hard bonewood furniture that Donal remembered from four previous visits. In Tristopolis, unlike other cities, the arresting officer always witnessed the execution. It granted cops a sense of perspective on their work.

As always, the benches were arranged in tiers, sloping down to an armored hexiglass barrier, floor to ceiling. Beyond it lay the execution chamber. Inside, a stone bier waited, its empty chains and straps dangling.

Donal stopped in the aisle, deciding where to sit. Several journalists and bureaucrats glanced at him. Some noticed just the pale complexion. Others—Donal deduced, from the minutiae of widening eyes, a tiny rolling forward of the shoulders—knew him for the lieutenant who had taken down Senator Blanz, dying in the process.

It's not me they're afraid of.

Choosing a near-empty row of seats high at the rear, Donal threaded his way past a down-at-heels journalist, then two men in gray suits. Each man wore a small black stud in his left lapel; inside the stud were superimposed a U and P, the symbol of the Unity Party. Neither man responded to a zombie detective lieutenant squeezing past them. Or perhaps they were fascinated—fearfully fascinated—by the waiting bier, the imminent reality of Finross's death.

It's the necrofusion piles that scare them. The thought of their own death.

Or perhaps they feared ending up like Donal, except that no Unity Party member would dream of taking out a life policy. As he sat down, he noticed several people flinch, just as he himself felt something cold from across the room.

Another one.

A black-coated doctor was entering with stethofork in hand. His skin was palest gray, almost white. He stopped, looked up at Donal, and nodded. His eyes were like chips of slate.

Donal nodded back.

Another of my kind.

The doctor paused at the front row, then ascended the aisle and made his way along the row below Donal's. Drawing close, he stopped. His hand, when he held it out, was long-fingered. Donal expected his handshake to be cold.

But when two zombies shake hands, their bodies are at the same temperature.

"I'm Thalveen," said the doctor. "Odom Thalveen."

"Donal Riordan. Good to meet you."

A faint scent of formaldehyde wafted from Thalveen's black coat.

"I guess you're here to make sure," added Donal, "that Finross lasts the course?"

The shock of Rending would kill an unmedicated person within seconds. It took skilled medical care to ensure the vagus nerve and heart remained functioning. Anything less than two hours dying was considered "easy and unusual kindness," prohibited by law.

"I am here to prepare Finross. Also the hookwraiths." Thalveen's hair was lanky, and he brushed it back with one long finger. "The wraiths do not enjoy their work, I assure you. I attempt to minimize their suffering."

"While maximizing the prisoner's, I hope."

"Why, Lieutenant." The doctor gave a cold zombie smile. "That goes without saying."

The gray-suited Unity Party men stiffened. Then they let out tense breaths, releasing their anger, and looked at each other.

Thalveen shook his head, saying loudly: "Too bad Senator Blanz isn't here."

Perhaps provoking the UP was unwise.

"He wouldn't see a thing," said Donal, not caring. "My hands were sticky when they resurrected me."

"What do you mean, Lieutenant?"

"Isn't it called aqua humerus, or something? I think it's humorous."

"Aqueous humor," said Thalveen, "is a liquid inside the eye."

"Then that's what I had on my fingers, when I took out Blanz's eyeballs."

Donal had raked with his hands like claws even as the shot took him in the heart. The memory endured, an undertone of terrible joy failing to offset ...