Kultus by Richard Ford Read Free Book Online

the evil giant’s name to the Slayer of Nine.
    He stared at the exhibit in front of him (something trapped within a reinforced glass cage) and waited for the Slayer to walk by. He could feel the hulking presence behind him, the laboured stomp of great hobnailed boots as they waded past and the stench of animal musk.
    When he had gone Thaddeus allowed himself to breathe, then turned his attention to the exhibit he was facing. At first it seemed like an empty glass box, but then he saw something flicker in the corner. The glass cage had the legend: Elementus Incendium written on it. Fire elemental. He watched the tiny flame as it flickered from one corner of the glass cage to the next, seeming in a perpetual search for an exit but never finding one. Blaklok could well believe that the tiny entity was going quite mad, cooped up as it was in a six-by-six box.
    Suddenly he began to find the Repository of Unnatural History distasteful. The only ‘unnatural’ thing about this place was the way its exhibits were caged away from the world, put in boxes to be gawped at by ungrateful schoolchildren. Thaddeus could empathise with these miserable beasts much more than he could with the lascivious crowd who merely lapped up the misery.
    He couldn’t get outside into the smog and noise quick enough.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    A crowd had gathered outside, embodying a rabid mix of the curious and ghoulish. This sort of thing always happened at the scene of a murder. Some people would be concerned for their safety and that of their loved ones, hoping to glean as much information as they could with which to safeguard themselves against a similar fate. Others merely wanted a glimpse of death; a sniff at a corpse, dismemberment, blood, anything to sate their hunger for the macabre. Over the years, the ghouls had begun to far outweigh the concerned citizens by quite a margin, and today’s rabble seemed typical of the morbid bunch that usually congregated for the big reveal when the carcass was finally wheeled out.
    Well, they would just have to wait their turn.
    Indagator Amelia walked close behind Bounder and Hodge, her fantassins, as they shoved their way through the mob and towards the warehouse. More fantassins of the Judicature stood on guard around the building, watching the gathered spectators. They were dressed in their traditional garb, not an ounce of flesh visible beneath black leather and iron, faces hidden under helmets, even the eyes shaded by a mesh visor.
    Amelia ignored them as they saluted her entry; she had little time for the pleasantries of the rank and file. The only fantassins that she was concerned with, or indeed trusted, were her own. Bounder and Hodge might have been dressed up thugs with little moral fibre to speak of, but they were loyal to her and would gladly smash anyone’s head in at her slightest suggestion.
    Once inside, Amelia could see that there was a bustle of activity in the far corner of the warehouse. Yet more fantassins, surrounded by the grey smocked figures of the morticianeers, flocking around something that lay quite still on the floor. It did not take Amelia’s keen investigative powers to deduce that this must be the body.
    As she approached, she noted a figure squatting down, examining the wrist of the blood-strewn corpse. The examiner was dressed identically to Amelia, and he looked round with his usual sardonic smile as her shadow fell over him.
    ‘Hello, Indagator. Late again, I see.’ The man stood, still smiling his stupid smile, which Amelia did not return.
    ‘Indagator Surrey. So glad you could find the time to attend my investigation.’
    ‘Come, come, Amelia. Even you should appreciate the aid of a colleague. We are, after all, the best in the field.’
    As he spoke, Surrey glanced intermittently down at her chest, the smile never leaving his face. He seemed to care little whether he was noticed undressing her with his eyes, but some men simply couldn’t resist a woman in uniform…