Death's Apprentice: A Grimm City Novel Read Online Free PDF

middle of a widening pool of red, blood seeping into the ground.
    The Devil turned away. He looked up at the black reach of the office tower at the side of the garden. In the rain, it stood as daunting as an immense cenotaph, fashioned from some black stone quarried from the earth’s depths. Others like it mounted toward the storm-darkened sky, mute guardians of the city’s wealth. Only a few people knew what distinguished this building from the rest.
    The clouds obscured the top of the building. Just below them, at the twentieth floor, light came from an expanse of windows. That was where he brought his gaze, head tilted back.
    Someone watched him from those windows, so far above …
    The Devil looked down at the dark figure standing in the abandoned garden. He could see that they both wore the same expensive cashmere jacket and open-necked silk shirt beneath. The same sulphurous blue flame sparked in their eyes. The figure below wore a heavy, clubbed shoe, concealing his cloven left foot—as did the identical figure on the twentieth floor.
    Their twin gazes met for a second. Then the garden was empty of everything except the dead peach tree and the madman’s bloodied carcass at its base.
    The Devil closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, as though drawing part of himself back toward the core of his being—
    He had other business to take care of now.
    *   *   *
    When the Devil turned away from the window, a face bright with anxious sweat looked up toward him.
    “Can … can I go on now?”
    Disgust filled the Devil’s thoughts. That was the reaction produced by each and every pathetic example of humanity. The cringing, sniveling ones that came here to his office were the worst.
    “If you must.” He stepped away from the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking over the abandoned garden square below. “So, what exactly did you want to discuss with me?”
    “I thought … you knew…”
    “Sadly, I do.” He turned and looked at his desk. It had been cut, a long time before, from a two-ton boulder of black lava-stone. “What’s all this … stuff?”
    “I brought some photos—” The magnate’s hands, rounded and plump as his gut, frantically rearranged the colored images. “So you could see what I’ve built up for myself, since the last time we spoke to each other.”
    “This is your wife, I take it?” He picked up one of the photos and regarded it. “A little out of your league, I would have thought.”
    “Well…” A nervous smile showed on the man’s face. “I guess I did well for myself.”
    “Money has an attractive quality to it. For certain women.” He peered at another one of the photos. “And this is your son?”
    “Oh, yeah.” The man’s face brightened. “I took that at one of his soccer games. He’s the top scorer in the city youth league—”
    “Indeed.” He bent down and prodded a few more of them about with a manicured fingertip. “Your daughters?”
    “Twins. That was at their ballet recital. We had to donate a bundle to the local ballet company to get ’em into the school. But it was worth it. I want my money to do some good now, you see. For everyone.”
    The Devil could barely keep his gorge from rising. “And what a lovely home you have, too.” His polished fingernail tapped another photo. “Three stories—more of a mansion, really. You must keep a troop of gardeners employed, to have all that landscaping so well maintained.”
    “Yeah…” The other man shrugged. “But what can you do? You gotta have it.”
    “Just so.” He nodded. “You must have it. That’s what you decided. What you wanted must be what you have.” He had picked up a half dozen of the photos, and now tossed them onto the desk with the rest. “That’s why we made our little deal, all those years ago. And you got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
    “Oh, sure—” The other man nodded his head frantically. “I got no complaints—”
    “Then why did you come here? Why did you want me